Our Feelings 



and he rolls over and dies. A flourish of trumpets — a buzz 

 of twelve thousand voices criticising his end — and a team 

 of four mules abreast are harnessed to the carcase. They 

 gallop out, while the music sounds again, dragging by the 

 heels along the sand the Hector of the ring, leaving a long 

 wake of dust-cloud behind. 



So it ends, and begins again. Some of the bulls are 

 more savage than others. One declined to fight, and the 

 indignant populace called for dogs to worry him. Another, 

 in making a sudden turn upon his enemies, dislocated his 

 spine and lost the use of his hind legs. The poor creature 

 could not tell what was the matter, and struggled about 

 with his forelegs, dragging the paralysed remainder of 

 himself along the ground. 



We sat and smoked, and were not so much horrified 

 as would suit the ideas of a British public, nor so much 

 excited as would flatter a Spanish one, but we were occa- 

 sionally both one and the other to a moderate degree. 

 They say that this is child's-play, because the bulls are 

 feeble and tame now in the cool weather. After all, in 

 spite of the atrocity of the thing, it is a fine sight, and there 

 is enough of the savage, wild-beast element in the heart of 

 man to make these desperate and bloody struggles interest- 

 ing to him. 



What I felt to be more objectionable than the bloodshed 

 was, that the bull had not fair play, nor any chance of 

 escape. Besides which, poetical justice demanded that there 

 should be a fair equivalent of men killed in proportion 

 to the horses. I felt, at the time, I should have liked to 

 be a good, strong, active bull, aware of the stratagems of 

 the art, to have made havoc among the gaudy bullies ; and 

 I believe we should have shouted with all the rest of the 

 company if one of the human wretches had been caught 



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