SOME UI^Js'ECESSARY TORTURES. 141 



with blinds, railings, sashes and doors all indiscriminately 

 painted red, thus destroying the effect that a little red 

 would have with green ; but this would be utilizing a 

 color that the red was intended to supplant, and thus 

 fashion takes its despotic course and is carried even into 

 the horse's mouth. 



This is on the principle of the Scotchman's plan to 

 create an appetite. He heard that eating a pigeon before 

 dinner would give him one ; so, to make sure, he ate 

 twelve, and when his hostess (who gave a large entertain- 

 ment in his behalf) saw he did not enjoy his dinner and 

 asked if he was ill, he told her the means he had used to 

 create an appetite for the occasion on the supiDosition 

 that if one pigeon would give him an appetite twelve 

 would give him a better one. It is the same with fashions. 

 They run into nearly everything. The extreme either 

 way is the rule, and these inventors who, thinking that, 

 if three tags suspended from the plate on the mouthing 

 bit is an advantage in tickling the tongue, nine and ten, 

 as above represented, would be better still. But the in- 

 ventor has, perhaps, forgotten that figure 55 is made 

 to use with a curl), and that a colt should not have a 

 curb put on him under any circumstances, for it is at 

 least from one to two years in advance of its time. 



Figures 54 and 55 represent samples of some of the 

 choice mouthing bits of the present time in the United 

 States. Notwithstanding the universal and long stand- 

 ing success in training horses for the most severe and 

 critical performances in the past, it is strange that the 

 objectionable features of the old mouthing bit wTre not 

 discovered long ago, before it was found that fashion and 

 folly called earnestly for new things, and that any shape 

 or contrivance vrith cut, color, character, shaj^e or style 

 would sell at a profit if well advertised. We recommend 

 them to the hardware trade or any dupe interested in 

 horse-flesh who has a colt to spoil. 



