Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-06-16

W
AsXHNlHWI eye. The show takes
DsNZr Il very much the form
~ Of procession, goes
up one Side of the street, down another
and turns into a side street when 1t feels
so inclined. 1t is got up as professions
usually are-for show. The horses are not
mere creatures of given amount of
strength. to pull a given amount of weight;
the carriages are not simply boxes on
Wheels with seats in them; the coachmen
ana footmen are not merely men to drive
and open doors-all Of them have other
than unitarian uses, and are part of the
pageant Of fashionable life. and. perhaps,
the chief part. Now let US see what a
swell turnout should be Ike.
Must DC High Stcppcrs.
First the horses should be high steppers,
which. for the benefit of the uninitiated.
may be interpreted into meaning horses
that lift their feet high in the air every
time they STEP and especially perform high
steps with their fore feet. In this matter 1t
Is true that the very high stopper is not an
animal likely to last long on city pave
ments, as he comes down upon his hoofs
with too much force and is apt in conse-
quence to injure himself sooner than he
would If he stepped more lightly. Similarly.
he Is not good horse for driving long
distance in the country, because he expends
too much energy on lifting his feet and
| rarely lasts as long on a country road a
less snowy horse The high stopper Is thus
emphatically horse for show and a horse
for cities. and is an expensive luxury. not
only because he costs a great deal in the
first place. but because also he often goes to
pieces soon. But his beauty Is not a mat
ter of dispute He attracts attention every
vyh admirGa no
essential to the horse is that his tail should
| have been docked of short. There is no use
| in Quarreling with this edict Of fashion. be-
cause it Is emphatically fact. One might
as we'll protest against the practice Of men
cutting their hair. Perhaps they ought to
wear long hair, but they don't Horses
tails ought not to be locked. but they are
Now, there Is something to be said on both
sides of this much vexed subject. In de-
tense Of the practice II can be truthfully
said that the operation itself Is not one Of
prolonged suffering at all The tall Is chop
ped of. properly treated to stop the bleeding
instantly and there Is the end of It. The
operation takes only few minutes. The
tall bone Is not q peculiarly sensitive part
of the horse, and until the stump is healed
| there is no reason why 1t should be used
at all. Further than this, the dock tailed
horse is a city horse. and a rich mans
horse. He does not have to stand at the
village store for hours, while the flies
nearly kill him. and he Is defenseless be-
cause of the want Of tail. He stands In
| the stable. with a light sheet thrown over
him. and the flies can't worry him much.
When he goes out 1t Is for an hour or two
of pretty rapid driving. and he does not
stop at all very likely. or. IL he does, he Is
so deliberately harnessed that the switching
of long tail would dIsarranGe his trap
pings.
Against Docking the Tail.
But here you must stop and can say
nothing more in favor of docking a horses
tail. Any mutilation of a noble animal
like the horse IS wrong. 1t is especially 50
| when 1t involves in all probability perma-
nent Inconvenience and suffering This Is
certain In the case Of the horses to which
the practice is applied. They are usually
| the best bred animals. and are selected
because of their spirit. Consequently, they
are unusually sensitive and suffer agony
from the flies IL they are ever in a position
where the flies can bother them. II COM
| mon cart horses had their tails dock ed
tfey would not mind it SO much. being
thicker-skinned less nervous slower TO
| feel pain. The fine, high spirited rich mans
horse-the very one that Is docked-is the
very one that needs his tail most before he
dles. For, while he may not need It as
Il ng as he is the horse of this rich man
always remember that as soon as he in
JCres himself, as soon as he shows falling
powers. he is sold. AMI sold to anybody who
VIII pay FOR him. There is no sentiment in
the sale OF horse, and when he passes our
| OF your hands he may go into the hands OF
a humane man and he may not Even n
you are exceptionally careful and will not
sell MIN save to some one who will give
him as good care as he got from you, how
can you tell what will be his fate when the
man who buys him, in his turn sells him
Think OF that beautiful spirited horse of
the end dragging a stumbling old dust cart
weighing his poor stump Of a tail while the
flies feast off of his patrician blood. II i,
an old saying that men deserve every pun
In q 70 hAtr l<~S
their cruelty TO their horses but the ONE
that deserves the greatest punishment Of ali
Is the rich man who. for the sake of fol-
lowing passing fashion, cuts off his hor.e, .
tail and afterward sells him. II he Intends
to take the full responsibility Of his action
he will keep the horse he mutilates as long
as he lives. and then no one can quarrel
with him seriously. There is in nearly ali
cities law against docking horses tails
but really humane measure would be one
to forbid any man from selling dock tailed
morse. when would compel the man who
committed the cruelty to support the vic
tim of 1t always.
The Custom Comes and Goes.
Yet 1t Is strange how this custom has
come and gone and come again. About
twenty years ago. as many OF US can very
well remember, there were few old bob
tailed naGs to be seen, survivors of a fash
ion that had gone out fully fifteen wears
before, which puts the last reign of the bob
tailed horse before the present fashion came
in nearly forty years back. But 1t had been
in vogue at periods long before. In the pic
ture which represents Maj. Mowbray seiz-
Ing the bold highwayman Turpfn (who es-
capped, too, on that occasion), while the dv-
ing BLACK Bess' has simply a SQUARE
banged tail. the other horses are appa rently
locked. and this happened more than a CEN
fury ago. Twenty years since the fashion
prescribed long flowing tail, then the
square banged tail became the proper thing.
and it still remains the favortte method
with many people. But about ten years
since the swells began to dock their horses
and now 1t must be confessed that 1t is
what nearly all Of them do. II you can shut
your eyes to the cruelty you must confess
that it makes a horse look natty and styl-
ish
AS for all the ways Of dressing the locked
tail, they are almost too numerous to men
ton. Some people like the fan-shaped tall
an effect produced by so cutting the hair
and parting II afterward, 50 as to make 1t
spread out like fan. Others like 1t cut of
square. close UP to the bone. and another
style is to allow 1t to grow and hang over,
so that 1t looks for all the world like little
feather buster stuck into the horse. An
other, and the stupidest fashion of ALL re-
quires the hair to be cut of short all along
the bone. that it looks like an abbrevi-
ated rats tail. There is really. II one
chooses to go into 1t, a great deal to be
10 49, a -4.~I