idity of mandarins
manipulating the strings of their kites.

Others, more recently reduced to the ranks of Rover's retinue, take
their medicine sulkily and fiercely. They play the dog on the end of
their line with the pleasure felt by the girl out fishing when she
catches a sea-robin on her hook. They glare at you threateningly if
you look at them, as if it would be their delight to let slip the dogs
of war. These are half-mutinous dogmen, not quite Circe-ized, and you
will do well not to kick their charges, should they sniff around your
ankles.

Others of the tribe do not seem to feel so keenly. They are mostly
unfresh youths, with gold caps and drooping cigarettes, who do not
harmonize with their dogs. The animals they attend wear satin bows in
their collars; and the young men steer them so assiduously that you
are tempted to the theory that some personal advantage, contingent
upon satisfactory service, waits upon the execution of their duties.

The dogs thus personally conducted are of many varieties; but they
are one in fatness, in pampered, diseased vileness of temper, in
insolent, snarling capriciousness of behaviour. They tug at the leash
fractiously, they make leisurely nasal inventory of every door step,
railing, and post. They sit down to rest when they choose; they wheeze
like the winner of a Third Avenue beefsteak-eating contest; they
blunder clumsily into open cellars and coal holes; they lead the
dogmen a merry dance.

These unfortunate dry nurses of dogdom, the cur cuddlers,
mongrel managers, Spitz stalkers, poodle pullers, Skye scrapers,
dachshund dandlers, terrier trailers and Pomeranian pushers of the
cliff-dwelling Circes follow their charges meekly. The doggies neither
fear nor respect them. Masters of the house these men whom they hold
in leash may be, but they are not masters of them. From cosey corner
to fire escape, from divan to dumbwaiter, doggy's snarl easily drives
this two-legged being who is commissioned to walk at the other end of
his string during his outing.

One twilight the dogmen came forth as usual at their Circes' pleading,
guerdon, or crack of the whip. One among them was a strong man,
apparently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression
was melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white
dog, loathsomely fat, fiendishly ill-natured, gloatingly intractable
toward his despised conductor.

At a corner nearest to his apartment house the dogm