REAL OltUF'-LTIES. Ill 



lessened the sufferings of the poor brutes that are daily toiling 

 on with streaming sides, heaving- flanks, trembling legs, and 

 shaking tails, indicative of untold and unheeded suffering. 



223. — We respect the high character and motives of those 

 ■who set their faces like a Hint against all gambling, whether it 

 be on a horse, a boat, a man, or an election, but we would like to 

 see the warm sympathies of the truly humane, directed, not to 

 the imaginary cruelties of the race course, but to the real 

 barbarities of our fast coaches, and post horses, our butcher boys, 

 and veterinary surgeons, of those fast young and old men who 

 habitually bribe a cab driver to drive his over worked horse at 

 some unreasonable pace, and above all to those ignorant and 

 brutal men who prefer to educate the young horse by torturing 

 him for not doing that which he had never been taught, and thus 

 give him vices that cause him to be ill treated for the rest of his 

 unhappy life. 



224. — We have generally watched the handling of the race 

 horse with the view of learning, and not with the hope of teaching; 

 but there is one thing we have often thought of in connection with 

 him, in which we cannot help thinking that his education might 

 be improved. Why is he rarely, if ever, taught to start well ? 

 He might be getting exercise and fresh air at the same time, and 

 his riders would be learning their own business, whilst they were 

 teaching the young horse its work. How often a short race has 

 been lost by a bad start ; and unless the young horse is taught to 

 stand in row, and start when called on, with more deliberation 

 and patience than can be afforded at a race, he is never likely to 

 start well. Each start that he makes in an actual race, is only 

 likely to teach him to be impatient and restive, but it might be a 

 part of his daily exercise to l)e taught to stand steadily in row, 

 with any number of companions, and to jump off only, at some 

 very well understood and unmistakable signal, which should 

 certainly not be the spur. 



225. — Every one knows that tlie difficulty to be met is im- 

 patience, and not laziness, and, consequently, the young horse 

 wants to be daily taught that he may stand in row, with any 

 number of restive companions, without being in danger of a dig 



