DOGS IN LONDON 261 



as possible, and all I wrote about the eats (as 

 indirectly affected by the order) has been left out 

 for want of space to deal with the entire subject in 

 a single chapter. 



When dog-owners were rejoicing to hear that 

 the Board of Agriculture had come to the conclusion 

 that rabies had been completely stamped out, and 

 were eagerly looking forward to the day when they 

 would be allowed to remove the hated muzzle from 

 their pets, the prospect did not seem a very pleasant 

 one to me and to many others who kept no pets. 

 I was prepared once more for the old familiar but 

 unforgotten spectacle of a big dog-fight in the 

 streets producing a joyful excitement in a crowd, 

 quickly sprung out of the stones of the pavement 

 as it were, of loafers and wastrels of all kinds — 

 keen sportsmen every one of them — a spectacle 

 which was witnessed every day by any person who 

 took a walk in London before the muzzling time. 

 These scenes would be common again : in one day 

 the dogs' (and cats') dream of perpetual peace 

 would be ended, and all canines of a lofty spirit 

 would go forth again like the good Arthurian knight 

 and the Zulu warrior to wash his long-unused 

 weapons in an adversary's blood. But I was 

 wrong. A habit had been formed in those two and 

 a half years of restraint which did not lose its 

 power at once : the something new which had 

 come into the dog's heart still held him. But it 

 would not, it could not, hold him long. 



Days followed and nothing happened — the 



