Most men like to represent themselves as being very popular with dogs. Why any sane, self-respecting man should be proud of having dogs notice him on the street, is a thing we have never quite been able to understand. But they are. They seem to take it as a sign of a generous, sporting nature on their part that dogs should wag a friendly tail at sight of them.
A similar superstition exists as to babies. It is quite true that it is sometimes deuced embarrassing for a man to have a baby conceive a sudden passion for him. But even the victim is proud of it. The onlookers, especially the parents—oh, God bless us, yes!—regard it as an absolute certificate of character. They would hardly find it in their hearts to blame that man if they afterwards heard he was a burglar and a wife-beater. He might be indiscreet, but still "how Baby took to him!"
Now, personally, we get on pretty well with babies—also with grandmothers. Up to the age of six and after the age of sixty the girls seem to love us. Affection for us appears to be a characteristic of childhood—first or second. It would do your heart good to see the little dears grab for our watch and bang it on the arm of the chair or the top of the table, or anything that is handy and hard.
Grandmothers, too, are always very nice to us, and laugh at our jokes—especially if they are a little off color (the jokes, not the grandmothers). But girls of sixteen, say, or twenty-six, make it clear from their manner that they consider us a tiresome old stiff, afflicted with a pathetic hallucination that we are funny. There is something a little depressing about this.
As for dogs—well, frankly, we don't get on with them at all. The best we receive from them is a cold neutrality. Of all the dogs we know not one has a gosh-darn bit of use for us—except when we are sitting at their master's dining-table. Then they come and fix us with a threatening eye and black-mail us out of half our dinner. In fact, we have a suspicion that nothing but a certain leanness and stringiness in our lower members prevents them from eating out of our leg.
There is a house, for instance, where we dine almost every—well, as often as our hostess will let us. We like eating there. The cooking and the conversation are excellent. Also they don't regard the wine-cellar as a place to keep the winter's coal and ashes in.
But they have a dog—a big, black, furry dog, with feathers on his legs, and the ability to sit up and beg for hours at a stretch. He has also the biggest mouth we have ever seen on a dog of his size. When he opens it he splits himself apart right down to his hind legs. Some day in a moment of forgetfulness or excitement he is going to take our right arm off at the elbow. But still we go on feeding him. We don't dare stop.
In addition to getting most of our beefsteak and our lamb and our veal, that dog has got our goat. He sits right up beside us and counts every mouthful we take, looking all the time as if he hoped it would choke us. If we don't "come across" promptly with what he considers his proper "rake-off" on our food—the brute regards us as a parasite, anyway—he howls in fury.
"My dear," says our hostess to our host with characteristic thoughtfulness, "I think your dog is misbehaving himself—hadn't you better put him out?"
"Oh, the dog's only a little playful," says our host, eyeing us with the cold disapproval of a man who has his own opinion of a fellow who would sit in front of a big plate of roast beef and trimmings and let a poor dog suffer. "You don't want him put out, do you?" says he to us.