26 JUSTIN MORGAN 



In later life, becoming more experienced, he often took 

 the initiative in times of danger or peril.* 



When True was a little over a year old j\Iaster Whit- 

 man brought a piebald horse to live in their stable. Poor 

 old Ceph was of low birth and very stupid. 



'Tn the Desert," Gipsey told him, "the Arabs say, 'if 

 piebald, flee him as the pestilence, for he is own brother 

 to a cow' !" 



Ceph turned out to be a "stump-sucker" or "piper," 

 and the grunts and groans accompanying his gnawing 

 disturbed the other two horses intensely. At last when 

 he began on the partition between his stall and True's 

 it was too much for the colt to bear in. silence and pa- 

 tience. He determined to cure him in some way, though 

 at first he did not see how it was to be done. 



One day, however, a bit of chain was left hanging 

 on his manger and, when he pushed it with his nose, it 

 made a jangling noise. Ceph, always curious, stopped 

 his "cribbing" long enough to listen, dully, with his flap- 

 ping ears, and to wonder what it was. 



After a short time True found, to his surprise and 

 satisfaction, that he could lift the chain with his teeth 

 and, as he was now tall enough for his chin to reach 



* In 1891 President Benj. Harrison attended a meeting of 

 The Association of Road and Trotting Horse Breeders, at White 

 River Junction, Vermont. In the course of his remarks on that 

 occasion he said : 'T understand that it was so arranged that 

 after I had seen the flower of manhood and womanhood in Ver- 

 mont I should be given an exhibition of the next grade in intelli- 

 gence and worth in the State — your good horses. I had, recently, 

 through the intervention of my Secretary of War, the privilege 

 of coming into possession of a pair of Vermont horses. They are 

 all I could wish for, and, as I said the other day at the little 

 village from which they came, they are of good Morgan stock, 

 of which some one has said, 'their greatest characteristic is that 

 they enter into consultation with the driver, or rider, whenever 

 there is a difficulty.' " — The Morgan Horse, page 27, Joseph 

 Batfell. 



