2 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



and draw cheques for his sustenance and keeping, but 

 all without a single thought of the animal as having 

 a character, a mind, a career of his own; as being 

 susceptible to pain or pleasure ; as a creature for 

 whose welfare they have assumed a certain respon- 

 sibility, of which they cannot get rid, although they 

 may forget it or deny its existence. Even among 

 people who are intelligent, religious, and kind-hearted, 

 as the world goes, there is sometimes found, as we all 

 know, especially when their own convenience is con- 

 cerned, an astonishing indifference to the sufferings 

 of dumb beasts. 



Never shall I forget the shock produced upon my 

 infant mind by a case of this sort in which a deeply 

 venerated bishop was the actor. The good man de- 

 scribed in my presence the great difficulty that he 

 had recently experienced, upon arriving in town, in 

 obtaining a conveyance from the railroad station to 

 the house where he was to stay, two or three miles 

 distant. Through some mistake, no carriage had been 

 sent for him; and by the liverymen to whom the 

 bishop applied he was told that all their horses were 

 so wearied and jaded, a huge picnic or funeral hav- 

 ing just occurred in the village, that they absolutely 

 could not send one out again. But the successor of 

 the Apostles so wrought upon the stable-keepers by 

 his eloquence — thus he narrated, without suspicion 

 of the awful judgment that was passing upon him by 

 youthful innocence, sitting unnoticed in a corner — 

 that some unlucky, overtired brute was finally dragged 

 from his stall and sent off upon the five-mile jaunt. 

 Now the day was warm, to be sure, and the bishop a 

 stout man; still, being in the prime of life, he could 



