Henry Ward Beecher many times owned his love for horses, as in his one novel, Norwood:
“I tell you,” said Hiram, turning slightly toward the doctor, “these horses are jest as near human as is good for ’em. A good horse has sense jest as much as a man has; and he’s proud, too, and he loves to be praised, and he knows when you treat him with respect. A good horse has the best p’ints of a man without his failin’s.”
“What do you think becomes of horses, Hiram, when they die?” said Rose.
“Wal, Miss Rose, it’s my opinion that there’s use for horses hereafter, and that you’ll find there’s a horse-heaven. There’s Scripture for that, too.”
“Ah!” said Rose, a little surprised at these confident assertions. “What Scripture do you mean?”
“Why, in the Book of Revelation! Don’t it give an account of a white horse, and a red horse, and black horses, and gray horses? I’ve allers s’posed that when it said Death rode on a pale horse, it must have been gray, ’cause it had mentioned white once already. In the ninth chapter, too, it says there was an army of two hundred thousand horsemen. Now, I should like to know where they got so many horses in heaven, if none of ’em that die off here go there? It’s my opinion that a good horse’s a darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad man!”
When we see the superiority of a noble horse to his brutal or drunken driver, it seems at least possible, and most of us have lost some pet that we would rather meet again than the majority of our acquaintances.
Helen Barron Bostwick, after “burying her pretty brown mare under the cherry tree,” inquires:
Is this the end?
Do you know?