Show BILL NYE ON HORSES He Wouldnt Give a Kingdom for the Beast > > NOR MUCH OF ANYTHING ELSE His Experience With the Animal Including a i Few Side Remarks About Eoads and Burglars For THE SmroAY HERALD By special arrangement ar-rangement with the authorl The horse is the most intelligent am mal there is He is more intelligent than the man who bays him sometimes II I bought some horses during the past year Shall I speak of it here for the I benefit of those who are on the eve of purchasing a good kind sound young horse or a pair of those for home use I I nAve succeeded at this writing in getting j a very excellent pair of steeds so that now if I had a good road to drive them on 1 would be almost happy gJ 11111 rnrr I I1r vi 1if4 ft I FREE FROM BURGLARS Allow me to digress for a moment while 1 speak of the wagon road of North Carolina The system has been a bad one for some years especially in the western part of the state For that reason rea-son the roads have been practically impassable im-passable a good deal of the year The Asheville and Hendersonville road for instance is kept now in the same repair that the road is from Zanzibar to Lake Victoria Nyanza It was formerly atoll a-toll road and though the tolls were used mostly for personal expenses by the owners of the road the bill was always made out for those who desired to ride over the ronte 1 speak thus plainly of these roads hoping that it may result in great good to those who live thereon At present the road above referred to is simply an ill kempt trail along which are strewn the wrecks of busted vehicles and the bones of people whose necks have been dislocated m trying to ride over them and who have been left alone to die Though a public road of great importance very few people drive over it unless under the influence of liquor There are places on tliia road where mountain springs soak up through the roadbed and have done so for centuries while the roadmaster has been waiting for them to dry out The result is that a stoneboat is the only vehicle which will safely make the trip Hitch a 2yearold heifer with a claybank mule and then on the lead put a lavender jackass and if you are a careful driver you may take yonr children to Asheville Ashe-ville but if not yon will surely be short two or three on the way home Lots of North Carolina families have only eleven or twelve children left out of a possible twenty owing to the condition of the roads This reckless outlay of children it seems to me if nothing else should teach us to improve our roads Asheville has made an appropriation recently of G2oOOO most all of which will go for the improvement of her streets This is ir + ter than a like amount laid out in fenceboard advertising advertis-ing Now let the issue in the county be bully roads for Buncombe county and let the party who opposes the improvement improve-ment correct the bad grammar and poor punctuation in its dying speech and do it soon too I was saying the other day that after a pretty general knowledge of North Carolina for five or sis years I was astonished as-tonished to notice that there had been no burglaries within my observation This is remarkable especially to me for 1 I have lived where a burglary was not uncommon and where I have suffered myself having lost a silver plated butter dish in that way eight years ago also what butter we had in the house at the time it being concealed in the butter dish I also shot a burglar eleven years ago who was breaking into my residence resi-dence but he had only sixty cents on his person at the time and even that the coroner took away from me on the following owing day The burglar has it all his I own way at the northbut here in North Carolina where the mosquito never lives and the politician never dies burglary is a capital offense All burglars over fourteen years of age are executed This tends to turn the attention of bright young burglars toward politics 1 never felt so secure beforo in my life J leave my large massive solid silver watch en the escritoire every night now whereas used to put it underneath the mattress It is a very comfortable feeling 1 assure you Of course chickens chick-ens are not so safe especially during a colored revival I do not wish to be misunderstood regarding this matter but I was told on the start by a devout Christian of the Caucasian race that if 1 cared anything for my broilers 1 would watch them most carefully during dur-ing a colored revival for at that time the more earnest negroes were so all tore up in their minds that they could not work at all during the day and the revival took all the night or nearly so therefore when the pangs of hunger and the rumblings and retchings of a sinsick soul had been preying on an ordinary dinary colored man for a week or ten das he was hollow clean into the ground and his better judgment didnt stand any chance whatever i got some chickens when I first cam here Some of tnem had cholera but I did not know it at first Quite a num bar of the chickens were almost immediately imme-diately stolen but three of them were not They seemed to be spared as monuments mon-uments of African mercy Finally 1 found that it was because they had cholera Come down and see us some time I dont mind killing the last hen i a the boom wbea commny coma I I t U J I P SBring some butter with yon ou might keep you awake nights But we were speaking of the horse I mans best friend Ulbegan fifteen year ago owning a little pack jack called < Boomerang Hecost me eight dollars but 1 was poor and could not buy a horse Also it was unpopular to get one I iu any other way If yon got one in another an-other way in the language of the vigilance vigi-lance committee the community gen erallyvthreT in a halter at its own expense I ex-pense Boomerang was a bright young ase with a dark cross on his back and a sawbuck saw-buck saddle on which I used to pack I Eidepork and other titbits to tempt my appetite and tickle my palate while prospecting for gold in the bowels of the < earth Also 1 carried salt with which to salt my mines if I found them in hot weather and feared that they might get too gamey Boomerang had no home ties If he had any relatives they did not correspond corre-spond with him He and I grew up together to-gether on the Medicine Bow range almost al-most like boys and girls together you might say But he was not happy Sometimes 1 thought that possibly as he got to knowing me better perhaps 1 was a disappointment to him He acted that way Anyhow ho would sob and cry while he thought I was asleep many and many a night I After that I got more forehanded and when I got the first payment on one of my justly celebrated pickled mines I bought a mule called Yellow Fever This mule was sold to me as a good kind family mule and I intended to raise yet other mules for the market YellGw Fever was almost always fatal however no matter where she broke out Onr first grave on Vinegar Hill was taken charge of by a man who partially reached the tail of Yellow Fever She is still alive but childless No little feet patter about her corral No little croupy voices salute the silent night in her sim pie home Five years later I bought an American horse off a comparative stranger He was a spirited horse with a piercing eye on the side where I stood Oh he was a corker He had lots of pop and enterprise enter-prise and high purposes into him also bright red nostrils and he was checked up real high The man who sold me this horse said that he intended settling down and starting a bank in our town but he did not There was some hitch about getting get-ting a large enough building I believe He sold me this horseHectic by Judas Priestbecause his wife had died He said that Hectic was her horse and since she died he could not bear to look at him Then he came and cried into my lap quite a little spell That night the horse was ill all night A neighbor told me that Hectic had the colic but when I put ray hand on the little hot stomach of my steed he kicked me across the plaza and into a bed of cacti It hurt me a good deal especially in my finer feelings It doesnt take much to hurt my finer feelings I suppose sup-pose that it would be very difficult indeed in-deed to find a man who is so susceptible to a kick at the hands of u spirited horse as 1 am On the following day a veterinarian from Leipsic examined Hectic and made quite an extended report I am not a horse man so I cannot remember what he said but 1 know he said that his lampers were down I asked him if we could not get them up again I would do all that I could to boom them through the press and on ihe street But looked at me sadly and could see the tears gathering in his eyes Then he turned way and 1 could hear him mutter Eomething to himself in German I do not understand German readily but 1 would not be the man he was talking about for anything in this world Later when I had taken the crape off the stable door and had waited a year after the death of Hectic for he could not eat anything but kumiss with his artificial teeth and so died about six weeks after his mind failed 1 bought an Indian pony called Hiawatha Hia k 3 f JP I I t H1AWATHA TIlE IXDIAN POXY watha is still alive though very few of his owners are He belonged to the Si wash tribe and had a brand on him which was the crest of Old Soiled Nose the chief of the Yaps Hiawatha came into our family well recommended by one of the pleasantest extemporaneous speakers I ever saw His home was on Fiftyeighth street New York city and he dealt in horses just because he loved them He said that Hiawatha knew more than lots of men who held office and 1 never saw a man use such an effort to control himself him-self as this man did when he said good by to Hiawatha and took the ferry for his wretched and lonely home Fortunately Hiawatha did not kill my of our family because we have a g ood physician and he can save any one after many other doctors have given them up So then 1 sent the nonv back to the owner to board I forgot to say that a neighbor of mine borrowed Hiawatha to ride to hounds once and has not spoken to me since I sent the animal back to board at twelve dollars a month and left orders with the man to sell but of course at twelve dollars a month for plain table dhote board the sale hangs fire and seems to drag a good deal Last week this man wrote me that the bill was eightjfour dollars and that Hiawatha had n real cunning little mule colt He said that society was all by the ears about it Also the colt I went over there to see Hiawatha soon after He could not look me in tins Face I think thisshows distinctly that as a race the Indian cannot be thoroughly thorough-ly civilized The man says that this incident has hurt his stablea good deal and many of the lum turn as he calls them the real pate defoie gras of New York refuse to tend him their boarders P f JspQ i S A |