CHECKING AND BLINDERS. 3 



degree that interferes in a very serious manner with the use 

 and freedom of the hands. Even the lowest savages are en- 

 slaved by the same inexorable law. This we see shown in a 

 thousand different ways, many of them at the expense of even 

 the most extreme and long-continued torture. Thus, certain 

 tribes of the American Indians flatten and compress the head 

 of the child with a board, while savages in other portions of the 

 world distort different parts of the body in different ways, 

 tattooing, filing and coloring the teeth, wearing rings in the 



Fig. 303. — As the heads of gentle driving horses are frequently checked up, 



as referred to in text. 



nose and lips, inserting blocks of wood or rings in the under 

 lip and some parts of the face — the greater the extreme, the 

 higher the proof of gentility. 



Now this custom of using arbitrary checks upon horses for 

 giving fictitious style to them in driving, at the expense of a 

 great deal of comfort, freedom, and vital force, is of the same 

 foolish character, which, in the hands of ignorant people espe- 

 cially, has become so very common as to demand the most seri- 

 ous effort to prevent it. 



