Year: 1870

upon all coming a1Jer, until life mad become


one long carnival of cruelty.


Fearful as all this is, a broader and graver


chapter opens before us when we come to look
| more narrowly and see what is the range of


cruelty, its opportunity, its resource, its work


in the more delicate and intimate relations of


life. The real cruelties are the uurecorded ones,
figuring in no history, but written indelibly


upon the heart. They are enacted where we
| see smiles, and know that charities ought to
| abound. They are wounds at the hands of


these whose mission it is to heal rather than


to hurt, wounds at their hands sometimes when
| they do not mean to hurt-wounds of Ignorance
sometimes, as well as of thoughtlessness or
| graver wrong.


Did it ever occur to you how much cruelty
| there is exercised toward childhood ? Look
| back at your own. How carelessly mothers go


off and leave children to go to bed alone, or


with domestic. And who is domestic !? an
| ignorant girl, with tongue, and superstition
| behind it, or a lover waiting for her at the


gate, or desire for little of the same liberty


her mistress has just set her the example of.


Is she likely to consider the child more than
/ the inconsiderate mother l know how | was
| made to fear the dark-impossible beings


coming down the chimney, impossible thieves
coming under the bed, impossible spirits to
| spring out at me from the lone burying ground


| had to pass nightly with bated breath and
! flying feet. Did you over hear ghoSs-s.ories,
when you were a child, with which two female
| friends would regale the evening, luxuriating
| in the delicious agony of fear, and filling your


poor little soul with breads that were to dog
| and to shame you through many year, which


all the stalwort courage of your manhood could


not wholly rid you of?-Look at the bare legs
| purple with cold that some kind of parental
| folly, or extortionate fashion forbids the warm


decency of clothing. Why Highlander could


not stand it. See the tortured hair, suggestive
| of tears and painful penance and unnatural
ba frnt o,a1 e fba for


the poor display of the parlor and the street


the sweet child-nature goaded into rebellion,
| or petrifed into submission by the tyrannic


exactons of society, enforced by maternal


vanity, supplemented with threats of punish


ment or promises of reward. Think of the


hours given to studies and graces which only
make superficial woman, and wife out the
| honesty of girlhood the stimulus of school
| prizes, which worry the brain and corrode the
| heart, and educate not bit of pinched waists


and tortured feet and studied posture, and look


and tone set to the prescribed mode run over
| the whole debasing catalogue of cruelties which
we manage to adorn with the name of educa-
| ton, which we yield to as necessary, with


which we supplant the grace of nature by the
caricature of art-then add the memory of how
| children are chidden and twitted and sneered


at and checked and reduced and kept under,
how the inevitable exuberance of spirit
| is made into token of sin, how in ten
| thousand ways they are irritated, thwarted,
coaXed here, punished there, the subjects
| of the most tickle, irritable, unreasonable


rule, and 1 think you will have mass of
cruelties sufficient to set you thinking, ard i'm
| portant enough in themselves and in their
| consequences to give heart and hand long and
| serious employment Social cruelties are cruel


enough, the whole hungry pack Of things with
| which men hunt down the characters and happi-


ness of others, loud mouthed, many tongued,
| busy, infamous and false-the cruelty that
| NEEDLES with other peoples private affairs,
| with their expenses, with their dress, with


their housekeeping, their coming out, and
| going in, with their rising and their rest, the
colors of their carpets and the style of their
| crockery, and the position of their guests and


the management of their children-but the
cruelty that exercises itself upon little child,


the cruelty that does not know itself to be cruel,
| that plants pain for life, we ought to have
| no patience with, show no quarter for. We
| ought to cry out and insist that this so tender


and important time should be exempt from
| tyrannies that detract not only from what God


ordains for its present, but what we ought to
| secure for its future He were worse than
| brute who should chain little child in some
| narrow and dark and fetid cell and leave it to
| grow there in solitude, ignorance and want.


And what is he who binds the free spirit Of a
| child to the whims of his own world worn
heart, supplants its freedom by the demands of
| society, and ties it down to conventionalities
| and makes it into starved and artificial man
| There are worse things than prisons and stakes


and knouts and inauisitions. After that they
| have torn or killed the body they have no more
| than they can do. That is the deepest wrong,
| the lowest stoop of cruelty which touches the
| heart and mperils the soul.


| And there is deal of cruelty in our domestic
lntercourse-ln that intercourse even which
ought to be rid of every suspicion OF it. Think
of the cruelty that there is in a sharp look, in


an inconsiderate word a hasty injustice, the
cruelty OF little stings and filings, the cruelty
| that plants its thorn and leaves it to worry and
tester. will not helf you-but just run over


the cruelties you notice in daily life, the strange
cruelties in the most intimate and delicate ire
| lations-nay, don't look after notes in others,
| find and brand your own beam-by the con-
fessings of your own experience, see how much
cruelty mars even the dearest intercourse of
| man, and feel how much need each one of us
| has of reform.


| But must go a step lower in the SCALE
| When God commissioned Jonah with message
to Nineveh he spoke of it as "that great city,
wherein are more than six-score thousand per-
sons that cannot discern between their right
hand and their left-and also much CATTLE"
"Doth God take care for oxen"? asks an
| Apostle. And the answer is not far. He careth
| for all things, for man, for bird and for beast,
and In delegatlng to man care over things
inferior He delegated to him no right to abuse
| that which He had made and cared for. Cruelty


is mean in the proportion that the thing He is


exercised against is beneath the person exer-
| cising it. We put the animal creation so far


beneath US that our lordly sympathies cannot
stoop to notice or to measure its miseries. The
| most faithfully performed service of the domes-
tic beast we never recognize with any gratitude,
full often requte with scant reward. about


enough to keep the animal we'll up to our needs
| and that only. William Schlegel was speaking
Of ont ha dow oft hot
when some one asked if it were not glorious,
| "Glori0us" he answered, chow could any body
| think about glory when crossing plain
covered for miles with thousands of his
| brethren dead and dying? And what to me
was still more piteous, was the sight OF the
| poor horses lying about SO helplessly and
| patiently, uttering deep groans of agony, with
| no one to do anything for them"


| do not believe you have any idea of the
| amount of positive cruelty suffered in their
| lives and in their death by the domestic ami
| mails given us as servants. 1t was great gift
| of God, that of the domestic animal. l do not
| we'll see how the several economies life could
| have been carried without them. Their
necessity may at some time be superseded, but
| in the past, with the subecton and culture of
| animal power commenced mans career in the
| measureless realms of traffic and ofintercourse.
| It is a great debt the human race owes them,
| hardly recognized and poorly rewarded A
| favorite beast now and then gets absurd atten-
| tion and fondling, poodle dog pet bird,
| creatures useless and out of place. not where
| God put them, or at what God created them for.
There is subtle cruelty in that because it takes


them out of their ordained sphere, and makes
| life to them what God did not mean it should
| be. Now and then horse or COW of some


marked quality is carefully tended, but the


animals man depends on and lives with, as
general thing are subjected to cruelty of treat


ment, variety and ingenuity of torture few
persons suspect. What is the life of common
| cow or sheep, which of the few comforts their
position is capable of, does think it worth
while to spend money or thought upon? Who


has ever written the history of the torture to
| which horses foot is subjected one of the
! most marvellous and sensitively complicated
| and delicate of structures-a perfect micro


chosm of Divine skill-the cutting, rasping,
mailing of ignorant Doors, the pounding OF
| hard pavements, the small torture of fever and
| corns? Who stops to think when he sees horse


limp, that limp means pain that CALLED


back or shoulder against which you press the
| saddle or DOLLAR is raw flesh, which by pleasing


fiction we deny to be sensitive, only because 1t


is not our back or shoulder? A hide that feels


the weight of fly, that is pierced by mosqul--
! toe, flesh that quvers when the harness just
| touches the raw, has got some sensation IN II,


and if it could speak would tell you so. People


talk about the constitution of horse" as If
| a horse were some cast-iron machine that would


stand any amount of battering, when the fact


is there is not more delicate, sensitive piece


of organism from the hand ofthe great Artitcer,


and the only wonder is not that horses fall


lame, wear out die, but that they live. No better


servant has man, and he ought to study his