232 ABC DIFFICULT TO THE BEGINNER. 



are very generally put into the hands of those who 

 give but little consideration to either cause or 

 remedy, and, when they do, often hit upon the wrong 

 cause, and still oftener fail in hitting on the proper 

 remedy. One thing may be depended on as fact, in 

 nineteen cases out of twenty violence and punishment 

 will be resorted to as the remedy, while it is an equally 

 certain fact that in ninety-nine cases in a hundred it 

 is the wrong one. 



One of the most material things in teaching men, 

 children, or brutes, is to make them perfectly under- 

 stand what it is we want of them, and this I suspect 

 is not always done in either case. Children, I am 

 satisfied, are often punished from our fancying them 

 unwilling or obstinate, when in truth their not com- 

 pleting their task arises from our fault in not making 

 them comprehend it : with horses I am quite certain 

 this is a matter of hourly occurrence. We are too 

 apt to fancy that easy which we know ourselves^ for- 

 ffettino; that A B is as difficult to learn as a first lesson 

 as solving the most difficult problem in Euclid is at 

 a maturer age, or in more advanced education. 



It certainly requires no great exertion of the in- 

 stinct of the horse to stop when we cry "who-ho;" 

 but till he knows what " who-ho " means, we have no 

 right to expect him to stop at the word, or be 

 surprised or angry if he does not. With some horses, 

 repeating the word twenty times, with a correspond- 

 ing pull at the reins, will teach this lesson ; with 

 others, we must do so a hundred or five hundred times 

 before he will perfectly comprehend our wishes ; for, 

 as I will by and by instance, there is as much difter- 

 ence in the capacity to learn in the horse as there is 

 in man, and for this difference there is seldom a 



