Format: Single
We call ’em yearlings an’ colts when they’re young. When they’re aged we pound ’em—in this pastur’. Horse, sonny, is what you start from. We know all about horse here, an’ he ain’t any high-toned, pure souled child o’ nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez you, is chock-full o’ tricks, an’ meannesses, an’ cussednesses, an’ shirkin’s, an’ monkey-shines, which he’s took over from his sire an’ his dam, an’ thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o’ goin’ crooked. Thet’s horse, an’ thet’s about his dignity an’ the size of his soul ’fore he’s been broke an’ rawhided a piece. |
This is from “A Walking Delegate” from The Day’s Work. A group of horses, most of them well-trained and skilled, are together in a Vermont pasture. Hpwever, one is a ‘wall-eyed, yellow frame house of a horse’ sent up to board from a livery-stable in the town. As a horse, he is clearly not a desirable animal, and he turns out to be a socialist agitator, who tries to persuade the others to rise against ‘Man the Oppressor’. The other horses are not impressed, and here one of them points out that until a horse has been properly trained and disciplined he is no use to anyone. It is much the same with men. |
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