Kindness toward Animals 417 



of which he is not prepared to fulfil his obligations to 

 the creatures dependent upon him. 



While it is the purpose of this volume to deal with 

 the facts and principles of science and practice, it is 

 not improper to briefly urge the need of the cultivation 

 of right sentiment concerning kindness in the care of 

 animals, for we really do not fully appreciate the unkind- 

 ness shown by man toward the inferior species under 

 his control. In no way has he more clearly demon- 

 strated* that he partakes of the brute nature than in 

 his treatment of the brute. As a master he has been 

 guilty of cruelty which it is humiliating to contemplate, 

 a cruelty not as swift in its operation as that of the 

 beast of prey, but which is greatly more shocking and 

 is wholly at variance with the exalted characteristics 

 that we attribute to humanity. The half -sheltered ani- 

 mals that have endured our cold northern winters, the 

 spavined, wind -broken wrecks of our livery stables, 

 whose infirmities secure for them no relief from hard 

 service, the daily exhibitions on our city streets of the 

 patient draft horse with raw flesh under the collar and 

 smarting under blows from unfeeling, cursing drivers, 

 and especially the deliberately brutal practices of the 

 race-track, where amid the plaudits of a throng of men 

 and women who would claim to have kind hearts, noble 

 animals, by unjustifiable "scoring" and in the subse- 

 quent race, are often forced to the last limits of en- 

 durance, are all evidences of an utterly selfish indiffer- 

 ence to the suffering of living creatures that lan neither 

 utter a complaint nor avenge their wrongs. A certain 

 proportion of humanity appears to regard the animal 



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