RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.

the best of all reasons; and boys are not
cruel because they like to see the fight.
They see three of the great cardinal vir-
tues of dog or man—courage, endurance,
and skill—in intense action. This is very
different from a love of making dogs fight,
and-_enjoying, and aggravating, and mak-
ing gain by their pluck. A boy—be he
ever so fond himself of fighting—if he bea
good boy, hates and despises all this, but
he would have run off with Bob and me fast
enough: it is a natural, and not wicked
interest, that all boys and men have in
witnessing intense energy in action.

Does any curious and finely-ignorant
woman wish to know how Bob’s eye at a
glance announced a dog-fight to his brain ?
He did not, he could not see the dogs
fighting; it was a flash of an inference,
a rapid induction. The crowd round a
couple of dogs fighting, is a crowd mascu-
line, mainly, with an occasional active,

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