LIFE OF WILSON. CXxiii 



" The horses of Kentucky are the hardiest in the world, not 

 so much by nature as by education and habit. From the com- 

 mencement of their existence they are habituated to every ex- 

 treme of starvation and gluttony, idleness and excessive fatigue, 

 In Summer they fare sumptuously every day. In Winter, 

 when not a blade of grass is to be seen, and when the cows 

 have deprived them of the very bark and buds of every fallen 

 tree, they are ridden into town, fifteen or twenty miles, through 

 roads and sloughs that would become the graves of any com- 

 mon animal, with a fury and celerity incomprehensible by you 

 folks on the other side of the Alleghany. They are there fas- 

 tened to the posts on the sides of the streets, and around the 

 public square, where hundreds of them may be seen, on a court 

 day, hanging their heads from morning to night, in deep cogi- 

 tation, ruminating perhaps on the long expected return of spring 

 and green herbage. The country people, to their credit be it 

 spoken, are universally clad in plain homespun; soap, however, 

 appears to be a scarce article; and Hopkins's double cutters 

 would find here a rich harvest, and produce a very improving 

 effect. Though religion here has its zealous votaries; yet none 

 can accuse the inhabitants of this flourishing place of bigotry, 

 in shutting out from the pale of the church or church yard any 

 human being, or animal whatever. Some of these sanctuaries 

 are open at all hours, and to every visiter. The birds of heaven 

 find a hundred passages through the broken panes; and the 

 cows and hogs a ready access on all sides. The wall of sepa- 

 ration is broken down between the living and the dead; and 

 dogs tug at the carcass of the horse, on the grave of his mas- 

 ter. Lexington, however, with all its faults, which a few years 

 will gradually correct, is an honourable monument of the en- 



pondent, that the thing 1 itself was no joke, nor meant for one; but, like all 

 the rest of the particulars of that sketch, * good substantial matter of fact.' 



*' If these explanations, or the perusal of my American Ornithology, 

 should assuage the ' little pique* in the minds of the good people of Lexing- 

 ton, it will be no less honourable to their own good sense, than agreeable to 

 your humble servant." &c. Port Folio for Jlvgwt, 181 1. 



