LIFE OF WILSON. cxxiii 
“ The horses of Kentucky are the hardiest in the world, not 
so much by nature as by education and habit. F rom the com‘- 
mencement of their existence they are habituated to every ex- 
treme of starvation and gluttony, idleness and excessive fatigue. 
In Summer they fare sumptuously every day. In Winter, 
when not a blade of grass is to 'be seen, and when the cows 
have deprived them of the very bark and buds of every fallen 
tree, they are ridden into town, fifteen or twenty miles, through 
roads and sloughs that would become the graves of any com- 
mon animal, with a fury and celerity incomprehensible by you 
folks on the other side of the Alleghany. They are there fas- 
tened to the posts on the sides of the streets, and around the 
public square, where hundreds of them may be seen, on a court 
day, hanging their heads from morning to night, in deep cogi- 
tation, ruminating perhaps on the long expected return of spring 
and green herbage. The country people, to their credit be it 
spoken, are universally clad in plain homespun; soap, however, 
appears to be a scarce article; and Hopkins’s double cutter^ 
would find here a rich harvest, and produce a very improving 
effect. Though religion here has its zealous votaries; yet none 
can accuse the inhabitants of this ffourishing place of bigotry, 
in shutting out from the pale of the church or church yard any 
human being, or animal whatever. Some of these sanctuaries 
are open at all hours, and to every visiter. The birds of heaven 
find a hundred passages through the broken panes; and the 
cows and hogs a ready access on all sides. The wall of sepa- 
ration is broken down between the living and the dead; and 
dogs tug at the carcass of the horse, on the grave of his mas- 
ter. Lexington, however, with all its faults, which a few years 
will gradually correct, is an honourable monument of the en- 
pondent, that the thing itself was no joke, nor meant for one; but, like all 
the rest of the particulars of that sketch, ‘ good substantial matter of fact.* 
“ If tliese explanations, or the perusal of my American Ornithology, 
should assuage the ‘ little pique’ in tlie minds of the good people of Lexing- 
ton, it will be no less honom'able to theu own good sense, than agreeable to 
your humble servant.” &c. Pori Folio for August, 1811 . 
