MARKS OF AGE, AND ABUSES. 483 



About the time we began writing this volume, we saw a 

 case of this character. A young mare had been hitched to 

 the plow, a labor to which she had never been accustomed, 

 by the side of a very slow old horse, while she was of un- 

 usually rapid motion. She would start quite freely and 

 quickly, pull the large two-horse plow through the unbroken 

 soil, until her strength gave out, and then, forced to stop 

 from mere exhaustion, would refuse, for some time, to go for- 

 ward. At this one of the men would take her out of the 

 plow, and, with a great club six or seven feet in length, 

 would beat the poor creature with all his might. Not content 

 with giving her at least a hundred blows in this way, he 

 kicked her fifty times or more with his heavy boots. The 

 mare was in that peculiar condition called " in season," and 

 was probably more than ordinarily fractious, as all mares are 

 apt to be at such times; but these brutal wretches did not 

 know her state, neither did they care. She was doing the 

 best she could, the trouble being simply that she was in the 

 wrong place and at the wrong time ; for it would have been 

 wise to exempt her from labor at that time, or, at least, to have 

 put her beside some horse having the same life and activity 

 as herself. That dreadful beating nearly ruined her for the 

 whole season, if not forever. For some months now she has 

 been on a visible decline. 



Such scenes as that here described are by. no means un- 

 common ; they happen every year by thousands. From abuses 

 like these few horses ever entirely recover. We remember 

 the case of a fine young sorrel mare in Tennessee, that was 

 unmercifully whipped because she failed to pull a very heavy 

 load up a very steep hill. The great welts made by the whip 

 stood up all over her body as large as a man's finger. She 

 was made very sick, and gradually declined, until she became 

 almost worthless. Just before this time she had been sold 

 for one hundred and fifty dollars ; but six months afterward 

 she would not bring fifty. 



« Many a horse has been killed by a sudden blow upon some 

 vital part. In our memory there now rises an occurrence 



,i# 



