166 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



the lee of a dilapidated shanty by day, and to lie at night in the 

 cold muck of a weather-beaten barn, just as impervious to the 

 weather as a five-rail fence, and not more so. When a few 

 months old, he was kicked out of the back gate to be seen no 

 more, except accidentally, for two or three years. The wild 

 pastures of summer gave him some comfort and some fat, but 

 the winter reduced him to a skeleton. The second year he was 

 a little bigger in size, but no mortal man could tell a two-year- 

 old from a yearling by appearance. When the spring of his 

 affliction had come, when he was to be " broken," as it was 

 called, some old fellow was sent out to Mattaket or Koskata 

 (local places east and west of the town,) to look him up and 

 drive him to the owner. After being duly emasculated, and 

 thb wounded arteries and cords tied up with a ropeyarn, he was 

 left for awhile to get well as he could. A very little hay was 

 given him, which luckily kept down the inflammation, and in a 

 month or so, he was put into the hands of the professional 

 breaker to be " broken." This important instructor was usually 

 a blear-eyed savage, measuring about four feet across the 

 shoulders. He came with his great shaggy whiskers and fist 

 like a top-maul, the blood apparently bursting through his red 

 and varnished face, and his nose blazing like the lightship on 

 Brandywine Shoals. Armed with his loaded whip and diabol- 

 ical bitting bridle, and occasionally a cart-stick to knock his 

 pupil down when circumstances required, the poor pot-bellied 

 victim was put into his hands. Then he was whipped to make 

 him go, when he did not know how to ; and whipped to make 

 him stop, when he did not know he must. He was knocked 

 down when he reared, and knocked down when he " balked." 

 The wales on his body gave him the appearance of a zebra^ 

 while the scars and chafes on his back and shoulders made him 

 more spotted than a leopard. After all the spirit and brains 

 and blood were beaten out of him, he was delivered into the 

 hands of his owner, a poor, timid, ignorant, weak, stubborn 

 and good-for-nothing beast. The proprietor took him at once 

 to the blacksmith to be cruelized a little more. He did not 

 know how to eat hay very well, and was totally ignorant of 

 corn ; and, under the advice of some ignorant neighbors, 

 backed up by a horse-jockey or two, the whole roof of his mouth 

 was burnt and mangled with a hot iron to cure him of the 



