AN EXCITED AUDIENCE. 219- 



On December 20th followed another lecture at 

 Boston ; not at the Lowell Institute this time, but in 

 the Tremont Temple, for the American Society for the 

 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The subject chosen 

 was " The Hoof of the Horse," and the lecture seems to* 

 have given rise to much subsequent discussion, and not 

 a little ill-feeling among the local farriers. The audience 

 themselves were remarkably enthusiastic in their expres- 

 sions of approval : 



On the 20th (runs the " log,") my horse lecture came off with 

 enormous success. I had hardly spoken the last words when an 

 excited crowd surged on the platform from both sides, and converged 

 on me. They trod in the water basin, and upset it. They knocked 

 the water-bottle over, and deluged my table, spoiling the colours and 

 losing the small sponge. But they were madly enthusiastic, and I 

 could pardon them. Requests were made on all sides for my return 

 to Boston, and repetition of the lecture. 



I heard one man delivering a lecture of his own. He got hold 

 of a hoof and a shoe, and argued that as the hoof was rounded and 

 the shoe was rounded, the hoof was made for the shoe. Of course, 

 this was " spoke sarcastic." 



Those personally interested in the orthodox system 

 of shoeing were far otherwise affected by the lecture, as 

 may be gathered from a subsequent passage : 



Here's a to-do ! The farriers and horse-shoe contractors have 

 risen in their wrath against me. One of them, who ought to have 

 known better, " went for me " in a lecture, and said that " such 

 shoes as I exhibited were the work of ignorant, beery brutes, and 

 could only have been found in England." That very man was at 

 my lecture, and had not the courage to attack me, though I invited 

 attack, and remained on the platform nearly half an hour after the 

 lecture. But, although he talked in that way, and wrote similarly 

 vitriolic letters to the local papers, he did not contradict a single 



