"IT is as you say; he is not handsome, certainly not beautiful asflowers and the stars and a woman are but he has another sort ofbeauty, I think, such a beauty as made Victor Hugo's monster,Gwynplaine, fascinating, or gives a certain sort of charm to a bandedrattlesnake. He is not much like the dove-eyed setter over whom weshot woodcock this afternoon, but to me he is the fairest object onthe face of the earth, this gaunt brindled Ulm."What is there about an Ulm especially attractive? Well, I don't know.About Ulms in the abstract, very little, I imagine. About an Ulm inthe concrete, particularly the brute near us a great deal. The Ulm isa morbid development in dog-breeding, anyhow. I remember, as doubtlessyou do as well, when the animals first made their appearance in thiscountry a few years ago. The big, dirty-white beasts, dappled withdark blotches and with countenances unexplainably threatening,reminded one of hyenas with huge dog forms. Germans brought them overfirst, and they were affected by saloon-keepers and their class. Theycalled them Siberian blood-hounds then, but the dog-fanciers got holdof them, and they became, with their sinister obtrusiveness, a featureof the shows; the breed was defined more clearly, and now they areknown as Great Danes or Ulms, indifferently. How they originated Inever cared to learn. I imagine it sometimes. I fancy some jilted,jaundiced descendant of the sea-rovers, retiring to his castle, andendeavouring, by mating some ugly bloodhound with a wild wolf, toproduce a quadruped as fierce and cowardly and treacherous as a man orwoman may be.