Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1895-10-25

and some say forty thousand, wrote in
the Bible: "A righteous man regardeth
the life of his beast" Sir Henry Law
rence's care of the horse was beautiful
ly Christian. He says: II expect we
| shall lose Conrad, though | have taken
so much care of him that he may come
in cool. | always walk him the last
four or five miles, and as J walk myself
the first hour, it is only in the middle of
the journey we get over the ground
The Ettrick Shepherd in his matchless
| Ambrosial Nights speaks of the NAL
treatment of the horse as a practical
blasphemy. l do not believe in the
TRANSPORTATION OF souls, but cannot
very severely denounce the idea, for
when see men who cut and bruise and
whack and welt and strike and maui
and outrage and insult the horse, that
beautiful servant of the human race,
who carries our burdens and pulls our
| ploughs, and turns our threshers and
our mills, and runs for our doctors
when see men thus beating and abus-
ing and outraging that creature. it
seems to me that il would be only fair
that the doctrine OF transmigration of
souls should prove true, and that for
their punishment they should pass over
into some poor miserable brute and be
beaten and whacked and cruelty treat
ed, and frozen and heated and over
| driven; into an everlasting stage
horse, an eternal traveller on a tow
path, or tied to an eternal post, in an
eternal winter, smitten with eternal
epizootics! Oh, is it not a shame that
the brute creation, which had the first
possession of our world should be so
| last-the fowl and the fish created on
| the fifth day, the horse and the cattle
| created on the morning of the sixth
| day, and the human race not created
until the evening Of the sixth day? 1t
| ought to be that if any man over
drives a horse, or feeds him when he
| is hot, or recklessly drives nail into
the quick of his hoof, or rowels him to
see him prance, or so shoes him that his
| fetlocks drop blood, OF puts a collar on
raw neck, or unnecessarily clutches
| his tongue with a twisted bit, or cuts
| off his hair until he has no defense
against the cold, or numerically alb
breviates the natural defense against
| insectile annoyance-that such man
as that himself ought to be made to
| pull and let his horse ride.
| But not only do our humanity and
our Christian principle and the dictates
of God demand that we kindly treat
the brute creation, and especially the
/ horse; but l go further and say that
whatever can be done for the develop
ment of his fleetness and his strength
and his majesty ought to be done, We
need to study his anatomy and his
adaptations. am glad that large books
have been written to show how he can
| be best managed, and how his ailments
| can be cured, and what his usefulness
| is, and what his capacities are. 1t would
| be shame if in this age Of the world
| when the florist has turned the thin
flower Of the wood into gorgeous rose,
and the pomologist has changed the
acrid and gnarled fruit of the ancients
into the very poetry of pear. and peach,
and plum, and grape, and apple, and
the snarling cur of the Orient has be-
come the great mastiff, and the miser-
| able creature of the oiden times barn
yard has become the Devonshire, and
| the Attorney, and the ShorthOrn, that
| the horse, grander than them all, should
| get no advantage from our science, or
our civilization, or our Christianity.
Groomed to the last point of soft bril-
| lance, his flowing name a billow of
beauty, his arched neck in utmost
rhythm of curve, let him be harnessed
in graceful trappings and then driven
to the furthest goal of excellence, and
then fed at luxuriant oat bins, and
blanketed in comfortable stall. The
human race deserves all kindness, all
care all reward, all succulent forage
| and soft litter and paradisiacal pas
ture field. Those farms in Ken
lucky and in different parts of the
North. where the horse is trained to
perfection in fieetness and in beauty
and in majesty, are well set apart.
lUcTe Is uO luOic VII tue Ill uTlNlnG
slow than in driving fast, any more
than a freight train going ten miles
the hour is better than an express train
going fifty. There is a delusion abroad
in the world that thing must be neces-
sarily good and Christian if it is slow
and dull and plodding. There are very
few good people who seem to imagine
it is humbly pious to drive a spawned
CALLED, glandered, spring-halted, blind
staggered jade. There is not so much
virtue in Rosinante as in a Buceph-
alus. We want swifter horses. and
swifter men. and swifter enterprises
and the Church of God needs to get off
its jog trot. Quick tempests, quick
lightnings, quick streams; why not
quick horses? In the time of war the
cavalry service does the most execu-
ton, and as the battles of the world are
probably not all past, our Christian
patriotism demands that we be inter-
ested in equinal velocity. We might as
we'll have poorer guns In our arsenals
and clumsier ships in our navyyards
than other nations, as to have under
our cavalry saddles and before our
marks of artillery slower horses From