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Show Th Cranky Horse. (Harper's Weekly.) I have spent much of a long life in the observation of horses. I have reared them, broken them, trained them, ridden them and driven them in every form from the plow to the four-in-hand. The result of these years of study is summed up in one sentence: I believe the horse to be part maniac and part Idiot. Every horse at some time in his life develops into a homicidal maniac. I believe any man who trusts himself or his family to the power of a horse, stronger than himself, to be lacking in common sense and wholly devoid of ordinary prudence. I have driven one common place horse every ev-ery other day for six years over the same road and then had him go' crazy and try to kill himself and me because a leaf fluttered down in front of him. I have known scores of horses, apparently trustworthy, apparently creatures of routine, rou-tine, go wild and insane over equally regular reg-ular and recurring phenomena. No amount of observation can tell when the brute will break out. One mare took two generations of children to school over the same quiet road, and then in her nineteenth nine-teenth year went crazy because a rooster crowed alongside the road. She killed two of the children. If any man can tell me of one good reason why man should trujst a horse I should be glad to know. |