A poor old worn-out white horse, after struggling on slippery cobble-stones to pull a cart load of stones, fell and could not get up again.
An eager crowd at once collected watching the owner thrashing the horse over the head and kicking it.
The horse was struggling desperately to rise and kept falling and groaning and was bleeding at the mouth where the man was kicking it.
I rushed up to remonstrate. A man, a stranger to me, called out “I can’t stand this, let us buy the horse between us.”
The owner of the horse made us pay much more than the horse was worth.
We got a vet. who said the horse was so injured that it must be killed, so he killed it.
Next day a paragraph appeared in the local paper.
Two well-known visitors to our beautiful town performed a very graceful act yesterday.
A poor man lost his horse, his faithful dumb friend who had been his constant help and companion for years. These kind gentlemen took compassion on the hard lot of this man in his grief and presented him with a handsome sum to buy himself a new horse.
The brute made quite a good thing of it, as the paragraph brought him various sums from sympathisers, and he was able to buy a heavier whip, and a stronger pair of boots, and a new horse, to thrash and kick.