Read "Concerning a Dog-Fight" by Andrew Barton Paterson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Dog-fighting as a sport is not much in vogue now-a-days. To begin with it is illegal. Not that _that_ matters much, for Sunday drinking is also illegal. But dog-fighting is one of the cruel sports which the community has decided to put down with all the force of public opinion. Nevertheless, a certain amount of it is still carried on near Sydney, and very neatly and scientifically carried on, too -- principally by gentlemen who live out Botany way and do not care for public opinion.
The grey dawn was just breaking over Botany when we got to the meeting-place. Away to the East the stars were paling in the faint flush of coming dawn, and over the sandhills came the boom of breakers. It was Sunday morning, and all the respectable, non-dog-fighting population of that odoriferous suburb were sleeping their heavy, Sunday-morning sleep. Some few people, however, were astir. In the dim light hurried pedestrians plodded along the heavy road towards the sandhills. Now and then a van, laden with ten or eleven of "the talent", and drawn by a horse that cost fifteen shillings at auction, rolled softly along in the same direction. These were dog-fighters who had got "the office", and knew exactly where the match was to take place.