VICIOUS HORSES. 
103 
But, to make the anecdote as short as possible, after three or 
four practical lessons, though from habit he made, for a day or 
two, a threatening motion, he thought better of it, and did not 
attempt to close with my furze. I caressed him constantly, and 
though at first he drew himself close up to the manger on my 
going up to him (which satisfied me that fear was the origin of the 
vice), in a few days he left that off, and we parted confident friends. 
I left my barricade as it had been put up, and I heard, six months 
afterwards, that the horse had never repeated his former vice; 
what he might have done if put in other hands or another stable I 
cannot say—I merely state the fact as it was. 
The low and uninformed seem to consider that violence and 
blows are the sovereign panacea for all faults, whether those of 
brutes or the human kind. It may at first appear somewhat un¬ 
feeling when I say that if T see a dumb animal and a man or boy 
corrected, the former excites my pity more than the latter; but I 
hope to convince my reader that 1 entertain this feeling on some¬ 
thing like reason and defensible grounds. 
Few men are so perfectly brutal as to correct a boy until he has 
committed that which he has often been told was wrong, conse¬ 
quently he knows that it is so—the unfortunate dumb animal has 
no such insight given him, and a thick-sculled lout, who may have 
just sense enough to know what it is desirable a horse should, or 
should not do, will suppose the animal knows the same, when in 
all probability he knows no such thing. But independent of this, 
such is the arrogant disposition of man, unless his disposition is 
refined by education, and consequent reflection, that whether his 
will be right or wrong, any opposition to it is, in his eyes, a crime 
meriting severe punishment. 
“ He knows well enough that he is doing wrong,” is a constant 
reply from a stupid fellow, if remonstrated with on any improper 
severity to a horse or any other animal. We will say a horse 
kicks at a man ; he then flies up into the closest corner of his stall, 
and perhaps trembles. “ There,” would exclaim the lout, “ now 
see whether or not he knows itand he takes this as proof, ex¬ 
pecting another person of more sense to receive it as conviction 
also ; but it is no proof at all—the horse had probably kicked be¬ 
fore, and been broomsticked for it; he knows this much, and fears 
a repetition of the punishment. If the horse could speak, he 
would say, and most probably with truth and justice on his side, 
“ I have generally found man a tyrant to me ; any docility on my 
part seldom rewarded so as to encourage, but any failure of doing 
the will of man punished with unmerited severity; in fact, when 
he approaches me, it is usually to harass or annoy me in some way 
—am I not justified in kicking at him to keep him away!” If 
