“Would you if you were a horse?”
“If you mean that I am a donkey——?”
“Oh, no! Not at all!”
“It’s going too far,” I said, “to call docking cruel.”
“Personally,” he answered, “I don’t think it is going too far. It’s painful in itself, and Heaven alone knows what irritation horses have to suffer from flies through being tailless. I admit that it saves a little brushing, and that some people are under the delusion that it averts carriage accidents. But put cruelty and utility aside, and look at it from the point of view of fashion. Can anybody say it doesn’t spoil a horse’s looks?”
“You know perfectly well,” I said, “that many people think it smartens him up tremendously. They regard a certain kind of horse as nothing with a tail; just as some men are nothing with beards.”
“The parallel with man does not hold, my friend. We are not shaved—with or against our wills—by demi-gods!”
“Exactly! And isn’t that in itself an admission that we are superior to beasts, and have a right to some say in their appearance?”
“I will not,” he answered, “for one moment allow that men are superior to horses in point of looks. Take yourself, or any other personable man, and stand him up against a thoroughbred and ask your friends to come and look. How much of their admiration do you think you will get?”
It was not the sort of question I could answer.