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 dogman turned down a side street, hoping for fewer witnesses to his ignominy. The surfeited beast waddled before him, panting with spleen and the labour of motion. Suddenly the dog stopped. A tall, brown, long-coated, wide-brimmed man stood like a Colossus blocking the sidewalk and declaring: “Well, I’m a son of a gun!” “Jim Berry!” breathed the dogman, with exclamation points in his voice. “Sam Telfair,” cried Wide-Brim again, “you ding-basted old willy-walloo, give us your hoof!” Their hands clasped in the brief, tight greeting of the West that is death to the hand-shake microbe. “You old fat rascal!” continued Wide-Brim, with a wrinkled brown smile; “it’s been five years since I seen you. I been in this town a week, but you can’t find nobody in such a place. Well, you dinged old married man, how are they coming?” Something mushy and heavily soft like raised dough leaned against Jim’s leg and chewed his trousers with a yeasty growl.