A BROOD MARE.
It is a significant fact that the phenomenal improvement in horses during recent years is accompanied by the growing conviction that good points and a good record are as desirable in the dam as in the sire, if not more so.
I had a quarrel yesterday,
A violent dispute,
With a man who tried to sell to me
A strange amorphous brute;
A creature disproportionate,
A beast to make you stare,
An undeveloped, overgrown,
Outrageous-looking mare.
Her fore legs they were weak and thin,
Her hind legs weak and fat;
She was heavy in the quarters,
With a narrow chest and flat;
And she had managed to combine—
I’m sure I don’t know how—
The barrel of a greyhound
With the belly of a cow.
She seemed exceeding feeble,
And he owned with manner bland
That she walked a little, easily,
But wasn’t fit to stand.
I tried to mount the animal
To test her on the track;
But he cried in real anxiety,
“Get off! You’ll strain her back!”
And then I sought to harness her,
But he explained at length
That any draught or carriage work
Was quite beyond her strength.
“No use to carry or to pull!
No use upon the course!”
Said I, “How can you have the face
To call that thing a horse?”
Said he, indignantly, “I don’t!
I’m dealing on the square;
I never said it was a horse,
I told you ’twas a mare!
“A mare was never meant to race,
To carry, or to pull;
She is meant for breeding only, so
Her place in life is full.”
Said I, “Do you pretend to breed
From such a beast as that?
A mass of shapeless skin and bone,
Or shapeless skin and fat?”
Said he, “Her sire was thoroughbred,
As fine as walked the earth,
And all her colts receive from him
The marks of noble birth;
“And then I mate her carefully
With horses fine and fit;
Mares do not need to have themselves
The points which they transmit!”
Said I, “Do you pretend to say
You can raise colts as fair
From that fat cripple as you can
From an able-bodied mare?”
Quoth he, “I solemnly assert,
Just as I said before,
A mare that’s good for breeding
Can be good for nothing more!”
Cried I, “One thing is certain proof;
One thing I want to see;
Trot out the noble colts you raise
From your anomaly.”
He looked a little dashed at this,
And the poor mare hung her head.
“Fact is,” said he, “she’s had but one,
And that one—well, it’s dead!”