Thompson : an Autobiography. (Constable and Co. is. net.)— Thompson
was an attractive if extremely bellicose fox-terrier, with " an enviable strain of bull " in his composition, and in these reminiscences he shows that " a dog's life " can be a very different thing from what the phrase generally suggests. Thompson passed from a petted youth, through an active and esteemed middle life, to honoured old age, and spent his last years, half blinded and very deaf, sitting before the fire, lost in memory, " hunting old hunts and fighting my fights over again." As he sagely remarks, " you need never be dull if you have a happy past to look upon." What Thompson did not know about fighting was not worth know- ing, though he assures us he was not quarrelsome by nature. From his first fight, when he discovered the " Thompson throw," he was apparently invincible, and we cannot share his surprise that he was not popular among other dogs. Thompson speaks with some bitterness of human interference with dog-fights, many of which are merely " friendly scraps," or again they may be " duty fights " undertaken in defence of master or mistress. " Many is the time I have had to punish a dog for some passing remark upon Master," he tells us. As Thompson grew old he tended to philo- sophy. From a collection of aphorisms we quote this : " A cunning mongrel may rise to fame, but can only fall to infamy."
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