The Story of the Rebellious Horse
A prominent farmer in the neighborhood had somewhere acquired a horse whose disposition had become permanently sour. This horse was not satisfied to work eight hours a day, or six hours, or in fact to do any work at all. She was on a permanent strike and inclined to sabotage. Her owner therefore decided that there was no use in bothering any longer and announced his intention of having the horse killed.
About a half mile away there was a young man who believed that he possessed certain hypnotic powers, at least in the matter of horses. He told the owner of the striker aforesaid that it was a shame to close out as good a horse as that, whereupon the owner promptly made him a present of the animal. The young man led the horse home and made elaborate plans for a process of education and benevolent philanthropy which would cause the rebellious equine to see things in an entirely different light.
As the eccentric horse had a record of becoming too handy with her heels, it was desirable to proceed with caution.
The early results of the ensuing course of treatment were encouraging. The horse seemed to respond to the humane methods of the experimenter. Every evening the horse received a lesson and finally was harnessed and driven short distances on the highway. His new owner, however, seemed to prefer seclusion for his experiments. At last he began to be convinced that the horse’s nature was entirely changed. He was elated with the success of his efforts.
Finally he decided that the time was near when he could exhibit his new possession by daylight. He looked forward with much anticipation to the admiration with which his efforts would be regarded by all the young men of his acquaintance.
Before making this public show of his horse, he concluded to give it one more tryout. He had always driven with a stiff check rein which held the horse’s head very high. When a horse’s heels go up, its head goes down. After making a little detour on a comparatively level road, he turned on to a stretch of road which led up a hill. When he had nearly reached the top it occurred to him that it was a little hard on the now reformed horse to make her climb where it was so steep with the head held up so high. He stopped the animal, got out of the buggy and unhooked the check rein. He resumed his seat in the buggy, gathered up the reins and started the horse again. Holding the reins very firmly he was, for a minute or two, able to keep the animal’s head in nearly the desired position. Then followed a struggle between the horse and the driver which resulted finally in the horse depressing its head to the right angle, after which there was a most remarkable bombardment of rapidly moving heels which, according to the driver’s subsequent report, established a new record over anything he had ever yet heard of. The horse trainer fortunately succeeded in escaping uninjured from the vehicle, got the horse by the head, unfastened the straps, and ran what was left of the wagon up on to the bank at the roadside, from which point he led his horse home, thankful that the shades of evening were such as to make his movements obscure. The horse regeneration experiment was a failure.
While the more remote highways of New England are anything but a joy during certain months, they become more attractive as the fields and woodlands assume their summer hues.