THE BARN. 1 03 



guide than a man not well acquainted with it. I have 

 had a horse take me safely to where I wanted to go 

 when I myself was somewhat bewildered; I simply let 

 him have the lines to himself, and guided him only 

 when he turned of his own accord. I believe they 

 think. They are perhaps not so different from human 

 beings. But they can not tell us. 



Now no man can serve two masters, nor can a 

 horse, or a dog, or any other animal; for either he 

 will love the one and hate the other, or else he will 

 hate the one and love the other. So much for the 

 training of them. 



But let us go back to the barn. The barn itself is 

 the special repository of the horses ; and 't is here the 

 thralls clean the Augean stables. The wagons are in 

 it, too, and the plows and harrows ; and all the harness 

 is hung on pegs behind the stalls. 



Horses are really exceedingly intelligent. They 

 know as well as a man that rain water slakes the thirst 

 better than any other. Like cows, they will frequently 

 prefer pools of rain to even freshly drawn buckets 

 from the well ; and in spring, when it is still cold enough 

 to freeze in the nights, I have seen them break the 

 ice in the pasture lowlands with their forefeet in order 

 to get at the water beneath, although they had just 

 been offered a trough full at the barn. We once had 

 an old mare, who, though she could n't speak, was a 

 smart old lady, and used to cross one foreleg over the 

 other to brush the flies away, thus killing two birds 

 with one stone, as we say. Most horses have much 

 more intelligence than men and women commonly think 

 they have. As they grow older their eyes assume a 



