102 
VICIOUS HORSES. 
“ in the extreme.” He is, however, a decidedly vicious and dan¬ 
gerous animal, and one who ought to have numberless redeeming 
qualities to induce us to put up with this most vile habit. 
I was once very near being so lovingly squeezed by a gentleman 
of this sort, that, had his kind intentions taken effect, I should not 
now be recording the circumstance. I was on a visit to a clergy¬ 
man, and concluding all his flock, biped and quadruped, to be well 
disposed, from the precept and example of the truly worthy and 
amiable pastor, I went up to one of his horses in his stall. Had I 
done this as carelessly and slowly as many men do, I should have 
been nailed; but making at once up to his head, I was too quick 
for him; but he threw himself against the standing with such 
force that it creaked again. Of course, in coming away, I timed 
it so that he had cunning enough to be aware it was no use trou¬ 
bling himself about me. On mentioning the affair at breakfast, I 
was congratulated on my escape, and was told he would thus 
serve any one but the man who fed him: this shewed the horse 
was no fool; so I begged permission to give him a few practical 
lessons that I thought would do him good. To effect this I got the 
groom to procure some good old hard furze, stiff as a black thorn; 
this I got fastened to the near side of the standing, just in the 
place where the horse would throw his hind quarter, so as to make 
about as comfortable a lounging place for him as were the famed 
barrels of old, lined with spikes, in which they amused criminals 
by rolling them down a hill. All being prepared, I went up to 
the horse in a manner that made him sure 1 was to be pinned; but 
on the first stir of his body I jumped back, he threw himself with 
fell force against the thorns; on doing which, quick as his motion 
had been, it was still quicker in jumping back again. He snorted, 
and as Mrs. Glass says of some dishes, he actually was a horse 
“ surprised.” In an hour I repeated this. He had forgotten my 
'pointed reprimand, so his good intentions got the same reward as 
before. This time I jumped up to his head, when the villain 
twisted his hind quarters round as far as he could, and kicked at 
me. This certainly was determined vice, and many men, as the 
groom avowed he would have done, would have applied “ a broom¬ 
stick to his hide.” What would have been the consequence of 
doing this 1 The horse trying to crush an approaching stranger, no 
doubt, arose either from fear, or hatred, or both. The application 
of a broomstick I do not conceive to be likely to diminish either 
the one or the other; but probably, instead of curing the one vile 
habit, would have induced the horse to use his heels to prevent 
any one entering his stall at all, or, what is quite as likely to have 
been the result, to have lashed out at every one who came within 
his reach in any situation. 
