50 TREATMENT OF THE ASS ANECDOTES. 



purposes of literature, logical, metaphorical, and metonymical : in parts, his skin, 

 for example, hard and elastic, serves to give sound to drums, profit and chicanery 

 to lawyers, and a stamp to corrupt Governments, through the medium of parch- 

 ment ; and being well tanned, makes shoes and boots equal in durability, to those 

 well-soaled ones, with which that most skilful of operators Homer of old, shod his 

 heroes. 



The horrible treatment of the Ass, in our religious and enlightened Country, 

 exceeds, in profligacy, every thing by comparison, excepting our treatment of the 

 horse, which is still worse in degree, as the horse exceeds the ass in stature. In 

 oui' youth, we saw with a shudder of indignant abhorrence, which now vibrates 

 within us, a young miscreant mounted on an ass, booted and spurred ; the ass 

 seemed dull and regardless of the spur, and the ignorant or naturally hard-hearted 

 urchin, dismounting and taking out his pen-knife, actually made an incision in 

 each side of the depressed and toil-worn animal, into w r hich, being remounted, he 

 inserted the rowels of his spurs ! We have even known asses advertised to be bait- 

 ed with Bull-dogs, under no question of senatorial approbation ! Impartial justice 

 however, compels us to adduce facts of an opposite and consoling nature, although 

 unfortunately of a more limited extent. Some few of the lowest class of labourers, 

 our Itlach-^uards, to wit, are not only very kind, but excessively attached, to their 

 asses, and the kindness and attachment are mutual. The present writer in his 

 youth, walking in company with a medical friend through the Borough High 

 Street, observed a great crowd collected, the occasion of which was, the mare-Ass 

 of a pannier-man, who appeared much in the //as/t-line, had fixed her fore foot 

 in a plug-hole, and was unable to extricate it; nor could her master, with his 

 utmost exertions. The fellow blubbered like a great girl, outdid even the 

 renowned Sancho Panza in lamentations for the loss of his Ass, and harangued the 

 surrounding crowd on her virtues, until exhausted in matter and in breath, and 

 lifting up his arms in the true style of natural or heaven-born orators, he exclaimed 

 as his finale " d my eyes but she is an excellence !" Demosthenes himself, in 

 his most passionate mood, could not have worked a greater effect upon his audience. 

 A general burst of laughter and applause ensued from among the by-standers, and 

 their zeal to serve this tender-hearted Ass-driver was inkindled in a moment, and 

 to such good effect, that they shortly released the animal uninjured, and more 

 than that, a collection of pence and sixpences ensued, from the example of my friend, 

 which amply repaid the fellow for his loss of time. 



Many of these animals are known to inhabit the miserable dwellings of their 

 keepers, in the same close state of family society, as the Arabian horses before de- 

 scribed, and to be particularly kind and attached to the children, looking into their 

 faces with a fond and anxious solicitude, when they are moaning or wailing under 

 any kind of suffering. It sometimes happens that, asses are turned out by the |>oor, 

 at the close of the evening, in the grazing season, to feed through the night, upon 



