An old horse replied that well she might hate it.
"For years," she said, "my tongue has been in a measure paralyzed. It always hangs out of my mouth when the bit is in, and I can't help it. Sometimes it is more helpless than others and I almost starve. I get better at times where some one owns me who puts a bit in my mouth that don't hurt; but I am getting used up anyway, and change hands often, and the majority of bits makes the trouble worse."
"I was once troubled that way," spoke up another horse, "and my master kept changing bits until he got one that was all right and then I got over it."
"I, too, had a paralyzed tongue," said another, "but it was not the bit, it was genuine paralysis—might have been caused by that in the first place, though I never thought of it. Anyway they applied electricity to the nerves and gave me some medicine three times a day—'strychnia,' they called it, one-hundredth of a grain at a dose. I soon got well."
"My tongue was all torn to pieces once with a frosty bit," put in another. "And how I did suffer! No one noticed it until it was all ulcerated, and I could not eat and scarcely drink. My master was one of those careless fellows who never examines his horse, and seems to forget that, however much they suffer, they can't speak for themselves.
"He did not know what to do for me and so sent for a neighbor, who told him to use alum wash until the ulcers were all gone, and leave the bit out until my mouth got well, meanwhile feeding me soft food."
And still another spoke of her teeth becoming long and rough, and lacerating her tongue badly. She said they filed the teeth and wet her tongue and mouth with a lotion made of calendula and water.
Topsy was a beauty in harness, and Chet was proud of her in his way, but from the first I feared hers would be a hard life, but my darkest forebodings came short of the dread reality.
Among other experiences that winter was one in horse-shoeing.
Master had been exceedingly particular always about my feet, but Herman was like a majority of other men; knew nothing of the business himself and trusted entirely to the smith, who chanced to be a new one.