viciousness.

"Remember one thing," Collins told the man who might buy. "If you buy
him, you'll be ringmaster, and you must never, never spike him. When he
comes to know that, you can always put your hands on him any time and
control him. He's good-natured at heart, and he's the gratefullest mule
I've ever seen in the business. He's just got to love you, and hate the
other three. And one warning: if he goes real bad and starts biting,
you'll have to pull out his teeth and feed him soft mashes and crushed
grain that's steamed. I'll give you the recipe for the digestive dope
you'll have to put in. Now--watch!"

Collins stopped into the ring and caressed Barney, who responded in the
best of tempers and tried affectionately to nudge and shove past on the
way out of the ropes to escape what he knew was coming.

"See," Collins exposited. "He's got confidence in me. He trusts me. He
knows I've never spiked him and that I always save him in the end. I'm
his good Samaritan, and you'll have to be the same to him if you buy
him.--Now I'll give you your spiel. Of course, you can improve on it to
suit yourself."

The master-trainer walked out of the rope square, stepped forward to an
imaginary line, and looked down and out and up as if he were gazing at
the pit of the orchestra beneath him, across at the body of the house,
and up into the galleries.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he addressed the sawdust emptiness before him as
if it were a packed audience, "this is Barney Barnato, the biggest joker
of a mule ever born. He's as affectionate as a Newfoundland puppy--just
watch--"

Stepping back to the ropes, Collins extended his hand across them,
saying: "Come here, Barney, and show all these people who you love best."

And Barney twinkled forward on his small hoofs, nozzled the open hand,
and came closer, nozzling up the arm, nudging Collins's shoulders with
his nose, half-rearing as if to get across the ropes and embrace him.
What he was really doing was begging and entreating Collins to take him
away out of the squared ring from the torment he knew awaited him.

"That's what it means by never spiking him," Collins shot at the man with
the waxed moustaches, as he stepped forward to the imaginary line in the
sawdust, above the imaginary pit of the orchestra, and addressed the
imaginary house.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Barney Barnato is a josher. He's got forty tricks
up each of his four legs, and the man don't live t