CHAPTER IV


Irish terriers, when they have gained maturity, are notable, not alone
for their courage, fidelity, and capacity for love, but for their cool-
headedness and power of self-control and restraint. They are less easily
excited off their balance; they can recognize and obey their master's
voice in the scuffle and rage of battle; and they never fly into nervous
hysterics such as are common, say, with fox-terriers.

Michael possessed no trace of hysteria, though he was more
temperamentally excitable and explosive than his blood-brother Jerry,
while his father and mother were a sedate old couple indeed compared with
him. Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael playful and
rowdyish. His ebullient spirits were always on tap to spill over on the
slightest provocation, and, as he was afterwards to demonstrate, he could
weary a puppy with play. In short, Michael was a merry soul.

"Soul" is used advisedly. Whatever the human soul may be--informing
spirit, identity, personality, consciousness--that intangible thing
Michael certainly possessed. His soul, differing only in degree, partook
of the same attributes as the human soul. He knew love, sorrow, joy,
wrath, pride, self-consciousness, humour. Three cardinal attributes of
the human soul are memory, will, and understanding; and memory, will, and
understanding were Michael's.

Just like a human, with his five senses he contacted with the world
exterior to him. Just like a human, the results to him of these contacts