Mr. Angell, now seventy-three years of age,—he was born at Southbridge, Mass., June 5, 1823,—the son of a minister, a graduate of Dartmouth College, a successful lawyer, gave up his practice of seventeen years, in 1868, to devote himself and his means, without pay, to humane work all over the world. He has enlisted the highest and the lowest in behalf of dumb animals. He has spoken before schools and conventions, before legislatures and churches, before kings and in prisons, in behalf of those who must patiently submit to wrong, and have no voice to plead for themselves.
Mr. Angell helped to establish the first "American Band of Mercy;" and now there are nearly 25,000 bands, with a membership of between one and two million persons, all pledged "to try to be kind to all living creatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage."
He has helped to scatter more than two million copies, in nearly all European and some Asiatic languages, of Anna Sewell's charming autobiography of an English horse, "Black Beauty," telling both of kind and cruel masters. Ten thousand copies have recently been printed for circulation in the schools of Italy.
A thousand cruel fashions, such as that of docking horses, or killing for mere sport, will be done away when men and women have given these subjects more careful thought.
"Evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as want of heart,"
wrote Thomas Hood in "The Lady's Dream."
"Our Dumb Animals," published in Boston, of which Mr. Angell is the editor, and which should be in every home and school in the land, has a circulation of about 50,000 to 60,000 a month, and is sent to the editors of 20,000 American publications. Over one hundred and seventeen million pages of humane literature are printed in a single year by the American Humane Education Society and the Massachusetts S. P. C. A.; the latter society has convicted about 5,000 persons in the last few years of overloading horses, beating dogs or inciting them to fight, starving animals, or other forms of cruelty.
In most large cities drinking fountains have been provided for man and beast; transportation and slaughter of animals have been rendered more humane; children have been taught kindness to the weakest and smallest of God's creatures; to feel with Cowper,—
"I would not enter on my list of friends