FOOD. 169 



the blast of a northern winter, Man knows that heat benefits his slave , 

 yet the horse only feels it as the product of impurity ; so that, either it 

 must suffer from the lowness of temperature, or it must languish from 

 the inhalation of a tainted atmosphere. 



The summit of wrong, however, seems to be attained, when we con- 

 sider the food which the companion of man is condemned to consume 

 within the walls of its dungeon. The corn is gathered after it has 

 become ripe, or after all moisture has ceased to circulate within the 

 grain; and even then it must be hardened and further dried by age 

 before it is cast into the manger. The juicy jierbage of the field — the 

 soft verdure of the earth — is the natural support of the creature. Never- 

 theless, man presents grass to his captive only after the wind and the 

 sun have expelled moisture from the stems; and after fermentation in 

 the stack often has parched the blades till these crumble beneath the 

 touch. ' 



When time has accomplished the hardening which human perversity 

 regards as most essential toward maintaining the health of a horse; 

 when both com and hay have been transformed into stubborn and un- 

 yielding substances; at the age when the first will rattle harshly on 

 being shaken in the sieve, and the last grate audibly when moved by the 

 fork, — then, only then, is either placed before the quadruped. Such 

 provision the prisoner must consume or starve. Hunger is the hardest 

 of all task -masters. The dumb being cannot tell of the agony occasioned 

 by man's forcing its organ's of mastication to uses which will wear down 

 the hardest and coarsest of stones ; it cannot portray the torment of 

 thirst, begotten by the long pulverization of matter rendered tough and 

 dry by artificial processes; it cannot describe the agony produced by the 

 grating of such nutriment upon the tender membrane of the stomach; 

 nor can it announce those cruel diseases which afflict the sufferer, — each 

 being engendered by mistaken treatment, against which the afflicted is 

 powerless to appeal. 



That which the mouth .was designed to prepare, the stomach was 

 intended to appropriate. Moist food is most enjoyed by the horse, and 

 moisture is likewise imperative for the completion of digestion. Upon 

 the accomplishment of this process health and life are dependent. There 

 is no part of the frame which is endowed with an independent existence. 

 By that which the root absorbs, the remotest twig is nourished. The 

 feet or the limbs may fail ; man may term such a failure a misfortune, 

 or speak of it as an accident ; but the weakness of the body is the pri- 

 mary necessity of almost all such occurrences. The trunk must bend 

 lefore the vigor of inflammation can be displayed; and health must have 

 deparied before the presence of disease is possible. 



