Imitation. 217 
tracted. Therefore, I have always kept up a succession of 
retrievers to help the youngsters over this preliminary step 
in their special education. Beyond that, there is little for 
them to learn from a teacher of their own kind. If worked 
much on game with a trained dog, they are apt to become 
dependent, and merely wait upon him, and then squabble 
for the game when it is found. Professional trainers, or 
“breakers” of sporting dogs—as they are usually called with 
too much truth, for they often break everything out of a dog 
—would probably regard my kindergarten method of training 
as downright heterodoxy. So it is; but where they turn out 
now and then a fairly good slave among their failures, my 
method produces no failures, no slaves—all thorough workmen, 
to whom toil in my service is their highest pleasure. 
However, as this is not a dissertation on training retrievers, 
it behoves me to return to the subject of imitation. Pro- 
fessional trainers of performing dogs can rarely be persuaded 
to say anything about their craft. No philosophical person, 
of course, believes in their pretence of possessing “secrets.” 
A necessary part of their business is the assumption of 
the mysterious. While the intelligent spectator is quite con- 
tent to admire the results they have honestly achieved, one 
sitting next to him would think nothing of it if there were 
not a spice of the wonderful, as he believes, in the method. 
Indian snake charmers know perfectly well the value to them 
of this mysterious element in their business, and never fail 
to insist upon it; though all their trickery has long since 
been exposed—as I have shown in my “Zoological Notes, 
page 14 et seq. 
Cruelty is no part of the method of the performing dog 
trainer. Such sensitive animals are merely stupefied by 
harshness. The men are careful to select promising subjects, 
and very soon ascertain whether the pupil is worth the 
labour they intend to expend on him. The strictest disci- 
pline is necessary, and enforced by unremitting firmness, but 
the stories about the use of red-hot irons and other brutal 
