266 I GO A-FISHING. 



wanton cruelty punish the guilty. But the time of a pas- 

 senger is often worth thousands of dollars per minute, 

 and the probability of such value outweighs all consider- 

 ations of comfort to horses. In the days of the horse 

 disease, when all the cities were suffering, it was both 

 necessary and proper to use sick horses for transporta- 

 tion. It was a pure question of money value then. Shall 

 a merchant allow ten thousand dollars' worth of perish- 

 able goods to decay for the sake of saving the health or 

 the comfort of a cart-horse ? Yet the absurd proposition 

 was forced on the public that it was their duty to sacri- 

 fice their own comfort, property, and health to the com- 

 fort of the horses. Nonsense. If you had a sick child, 

 would you hesitate to kill a horse if necessary to get a 

 surgeon or a physician in time to save the child's life ? 

 If you had a loaded wagon full of perishable articles of 

 great value, would you hesitate to use your lame horses, 

 or kill them if necessary to save your property ? Let us 

 teach kindness to animals, men and beasts, and make it 

 infamous to treat them with unnecessary or wanton cru- 

 elty ; but don't let us get our ideas mixed up on the sub- 

 ject, so that we place the comfort of the beasts above 

 that of the men. For all our purposes the comfort and 

 the life of a beast have a measurable value. The owner 

 is the judge of that value to him." 



" But how about killing fish for sport ?" 



" In the name of sense, man, if God made fish to be 

 eaten, what difference does it make if I enjoy the killing 

 of them before I eat them ? You would have none but 

 a fisherman by trade do it, and then you would have him 

 utter a sigh, a prayer, and a pious ejaculation at each 

 cod or haddock that he killed ; and if by chance the old 

 fellow, sitting in the boat at his work, should for a mo- 



