Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-06-25
GOOD OLD SERVANTS.
How Kfnd-Hearted People in Nero
ThOuEhtlessness Expose Their Horses TO
Suffering.

How KfndHearted People in Nero
Thoughtlessness Expose Their Horses TO
Suffering.
A span of carriage horses, after some
years of service, lose their style; they
become little stiff. little ''sore for
ward" it may be; one of them, perhaps,
is suffering from incipient SPAWN, and
on the whole it is thought high time to
dispose of them, and get fresher,
younger pair. Accordingly, John, the
groom, is directed to take them to an
auction stable, and in due course Dives,
their old master, receives in return a
check-a very small check, to be sure,
but still large enough to make a
respectable contribution to foreign mis-
sions or purchase case of champagne.
That is all he knows about the transac-
ton, and he does not allow his mind to
dwell upon the inevitable results.
But let Dives go to the auction stable
himself; let him observe the wistful,
homesick air (for horses are often home
sick) with which the old favorites look
about them when they are backed out
of the unaccustomed stalls: then let
him stand by and see them whipped up
and down the stable floor to show their
tardy PAGES, and finally knocked down
to some hard-faced, thin-lipped dealer.
1t needs very little Imagination to fore
see their after career. To begin with,
the old companions are separated-a
great grief to both, which it requires a
long time to obliterate. The more active
one goes into a country livery stable,
where he is hacked about by people
whose only interest in the beast is to
take out of him the pound of flesh for
which they have paid. He has no rest
on week days, but his Sunday task is
the hardest.
On that sacred day the reprobates of
the village who have arrived at the per-
feet age of cruelty (Which l take to be
about nineteen or twenty lash the old
carriage horse from one public house to
another, and bring him home exhausted
and reeking with sweat. His mate goes
into a job wagon, perhaps, possibly into
herdic. and is driven by night, lest his
staring ribs and the painful lameness in
his hind leg should attract the notice of
meddlesome persons. The last stage of
many a downward equine career is
found in the shape of a fruit peddler's
or junk dealers wagon, in which stu
alton there is continual exposure to
heat and cold, to rain and snow, recon-
pensed by the least possible amount of
food.
It may be that one of the old horses
whose fate we are considering is finally
bought by some poverty-stricken farmer;
he works without grain in summer, and
passes long winter nights in cold and
draughty barn, with scanty covering
and no bed but the floor. 1t is hard
that in his old age, when. like an old
man, he feels the cold most and
is most in need of nourishing food, he
should be deprived of all the comforts
the warm stall and soft bed, the good
blankets and plentiful oats-that were
heaped upon him in youth.
If, as is probably the case, the old
carriage horse has been locked, his suf-
fering in warm weather will be greatly
increased. That form of mutilation
which we call docking is, 1 believe, in
artistic and barbarous, and l do not
doubt that before many years it will
become obsolete, as is now the cropping
of horses ears, which was practiced so
late as 1910. But still ! should not
strongly condemn the owner for dock
ing his horses, or buying them after
they had been locked, which comes to
the same thing, if his Intention and Gus
tom were to keep them as long as they
lived. But to dock nurse. thus de.
priving him forever of his tail, to keep
him till he is old or broken down, and
then sell him for what he will bring, is
the very refinement of cruelty.--Atlan.
tic Monthly.