A MISTRESS OF HER PROFESSION. SI 5 



performers did tliemselves : showing her a few times 

 what she was wanted to do was enough; nor did she want 

 the constant practice most horses require to keep them 

 perfect in their performance, she seemed never to 

 forget what she had once learned. 



One of the most remarkable specimens of docility 

 that I conceive could be shown by a horse this mare 

 exhibited. She represented the High-mettled Eacer^ a 

 piece that had a prodigious run. The parts of the racer, 

 the hunter, post-horse, and mill-horse which she acted, 

 could have been taught to most horses ; but as a finale, 

 she was brought in on a common knacker's cart, lying as 

 we daily see dead horses in the streets on such vehicles. 

 This situation is so perfectly unnatural to a horse that 

 not one in a hundred could be brought to submit to it. 

 But this not all : her head and limbs hung in all the 

 immobility of death : the shafts of the cart were then 

 raised from the horse's back that drew it, and the mare 

 was thus shot from it on the stage. She never moved ; 

 and when her legs were lifted up by some one on the 

 stage, she let them fall precisely as the limb of a dead 

 animal would do. This, I should say, must be one of 

 the most difficult pieces of acting that could possibly 

 be to make an animal comprehend : no force, punish- 

 ment, or fear could have been used in this case, for 

 the desideratum was to banish fear : nothing but time 

 and extraordinary patience on the part of her teachers 

 could have reconciled her to this : she was in the 

 finest condition, and always fat, which horses will not 

 be, feed them as you will, if kept in a state of alarm 

 or much Avorried by w^hat is done to them : in fact, if 

 they are, they most probably will not feed. 



These horses, like other horses, and indeed human 

 pupils, are corrected if they do wrong; that is, if, 



