Dog and Under-Dog

IT seems a queer thing, on first thought, that the multitudes are always for the under-dog. At a tennis tournament the cheers are for the loser when he pulls up his score a bit, and for him are the sighs and the feminine “Too bad !’s ” when lie makes a good try which fails. “Why are you always on the side of the under-dog?” asked the man who wondered about such things of the girl who turned her head away and would n’t look because the game was being lost.

“The under-dogs are always so appealing and—so nice,” she said, and then, smiling, “I’m an under-dog myself.” That was just it.

The common feeling for under-dogs is not so much pity as it is affection, tenderness — they warm the cockles of the heart; one likes to have them around. And this is because we are most of us under-dogs ourselves, in the depths of us, and we feel for each other the sympathy which comes from resemblance, the attraction of like for like.

Under-Doggism does not arise wholly from condition (you find under-dogs in the very seats of the mighty) but from a winsome quality of mind which is inherent. You may know the under-dog by a certain negative attitude, an absence of assertion, a denial of superiority, a smiling air of seeing the humor of the situation, a droll hint of a wink at his own discomfiture. Some of them, it is true, do make the mistake of trying to be something else: they put on an imposing front, and in a momentary flood of favor and fortune pose as dogs rampant. Yet, even in that lofty attitude, the tail may be observed between the legs.

Decidedly (if one may be allowed a bit of under-dogma) one likes best the under-dog who knows what he is, and who accepts his humble but comfortable lot with complacence, even with relish and gusto. The young woman who dispenses with society columns and suitors and with a droll little smile confesses that she did n’t “make a go of it,” but who is, nevertheless, a most enchanting under-doggess; the young author whose life-work is certainly not of the Six Best Sellers, and who makes pleasant little jokes about returned manuscripts; the little girl at a piano recital who has to go on and on tearfully repeating her “piece” because she has forgotten the end of it; young men and maidens disappointed in their loves; small round boys who can’t do their sums; little forlorn, abandoned cats; Cinderellas — what is the universal appeal of these, wherein lies their dear power to claim affection and stir emotion, but in their under-doggism ?

Contrast with these beloved browbeaten, the browbeaters of society — officials, inspectors, authorities, champions, directors, good-spellers, winners of beauty contests, powers that be, governesses, boy orators, street-car conductors, successful candidates, belles-of-the-season, prize bulldogs, trust magnates, cooks, floorwalkers, tax-collectors, infant phenomenons — the whole inglorious horde of disagreeables. Ah! the super-dog, the dog rampant, is the real outcast, the miserable one, for he ramps alone.