SHOEING THE HORSE. 95 



very much edified by the lecture. I thmk it would not be 

 possible to put tliought into more elegant language than we 

 have had here. Most of it, certainly, meets my commenda- 

 tion ; but I cannot give it that sweeping approbation that 

 the gentleman from New Hampshire did. He said that he 

 indorsed it unqualifiedly throughout. There was one prop- 

 osition, which was stated without any qualification, that 

 I do not believe in it at all ; and in order to get up a little 

 discussion here, and to start a sort of personal combat, I 

 am going to begin where I disagree. The statement was 

 this: that all the diseases of horses' feet proceed from the 

 shoeing ; and the speaker said that it was from incompetent 

 or ignorant mechanics. Now, we have some mechanics 

 here, and they are pretty sensible men ; and that proposition 

 will get some hard raps before this meeting is through. I 

 dissent from it most unqualifiedly: I believe directly the 

 opposite from that. 



I have owned and driven horses thirty years, and I have 

 never, in a single instance, seen a disease in a horse's foot 

 which proceeded from the shoeing of the blacksmith, when 

 he had his own way ; and some blacksmiths who have done 

 work for me are here to-day. I say I have never seen 

 a single instance. I have heard one blacksmith accuse 

 another of producing a given disease. You know how it is. 

 When a man's horse is lame, it is a very nice thing to 

 attribute it to the shoeing, because he is going to cure it, 

 and sell the horse. He goes to another blacksmith, and says, 

 " My horse has been injured by shoeing ; " and the black- 

 smith says, "Yes." But he is a competitor of the other man. 

 Blacksmiths, I am sorry to say, are not above disparaging 

 each other ; and one blacksmith will say, — I don't know 

 whether he believes it or not, — that the trouble was pro- 

 duced by the work done by another blacksmith. 



Now, I will tell you how the disease is produced. I drive 

 my horse in the spring of the year. There is mud in the 

 road, and snow-water only just above the freezing-point. 

 I stop at some place, and let him stand half an hour ; then 

 I get in and drive four miles, not enough to warm his feet, 

 and then he stands another half-hour. I do not know any 

 thing about the case when he is put up at night : his feet 

 have been chilled, and they remain in that condition over 



