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 CHAPTER I.

 "LOW LIFE."

I DARE not say that the bull-terrier, my hero, was pure
 bred. I am strongly disposed to think that he was
mongrel-of the hardy, self-reliant, incorrigible type which
some mongrel races assume, until their very mongrelness, like
their ugliness, becomes almost respectable by its manly inde-
pendence and stoical indifference.
 He was not by any means a dog of fine feelings, though
no doubt he had his weak side, which had nothing to do with
the question of his personal appearance. He was a democrat
to the backbone, with so little pretension to be what he was
not, that if it had not been for a large stock of coarse stolidity,
and of self-confidence amounting to impudence, a total inca-
pacity to comprehend a higher range of character than he
himself possessed, and a certain scurrilous tongue of his own,
he would have been, in his unvarnished low life, still tolerably
free from vulgarity.
 If you will examine him narrowly, you will find clear
indications of the qualities I have referred to in his general