“I love all animals. Ouida speaks of their ‘mysterious lives,’ spent side by side with ours, and comparatively little noticed, little sympathised with by us. I know that many animal-lovers would raise a cry of protest against this. ‘Look,’ they would say, ‘how dogs are worshipped and petted, how horses are loved by their owners, how cats are stroked and fondled!’ and so forth. Yes, it is true. Out of the great world of the animals, we—those of us who are fond of animals—select a few who, we think, can minister to our pleasure, and we give them, or think we give them, a good time. But these pet animals who enjoy life are few in number compared with the many who are made to suffer by man; the dogs that are kept everlastingly tied up, or are half-starved, or are perpetually cuffed and kicked and beaten; the cats that are abandoned to die when their thoughtless owners change home; the horses that are overdriven, tortured by tight bearing-reins, lashed with the whip, made to draw loads that are too heavy for them; the birds—let me include them—that are forced to spend their lives in tiny cages in dark places. To any real, observant lover of animals, even of the so-called pet animals—excluding the beasts of burden, donkeys, mules, oxen, and the beasts that form part of our food supply, and the dumb creatures that are given over to the tender mercies of the sportsman: the hares that are coursed, the foxes and stags and deer that are hunted, the pigeons that are let out of traps (their eyes pierced to make them fly in a given direction) to be shot and are often left maimed to die, the sea-birds that the Cockney ‘wings’ and abandons to starve and rot, floating helpless on the waves of the sea, the pheasants that, wounded in a battue, are crushed one on the top of the other into bags to perish of suffocation; excluding all these—to any real and observant lover of animals the lack of sympathy, or the actual cruelty of man, is a perpetual source of disturbance, of anxiety, even of lively distress and misery.” I was quite amazed at the energy with which Vernon had spoken, at the vigour and force of his manner. He paused for a moment, then he added— “My love of animals has given me very many horrible moments in my life, moments in which I confess that my heart has been turned to bitterness and I have longed to make men suffer as they were making animals suffer. Yes, I have longed to see the cursed Cockney sportsman drifting face to face with a lingering death upon the sea, the callous game-preserver wounded in one of his traps and alone in the darkness of night in the forest, the careless hunter at bay with hounds rushing in upon him. But especially have I known the longing to turn one whom I have seen being cruel to a pet animal into that animal, and to be his master for a little while. You know some hold that theory.” “What theory?” said Deeming.