He then went on to show me that his shoe needs no nailing on, that it has clamps, fastened by thumbscrews which clasp the horse’s foot and grip it by claws “just below where the hair grows,” to use his expression.
I explained to him that this (the coronet) is the most sensitive part of the horse’s foot, to press there would give him great pain and cause him to go lame, and finally his foot would die and drop off.
Also, that these clamps and thumbscrews would strike the horse on the opposite fetlock and throw it down, and the centrifugal force would cause the shoes to fly off when the horse was going.
Finally, that these shoes were hideously ugly and no horseman would care to be the laughing stock of everyone by taking his horse out with such things on.
The inventor merely said: “All you horsemen are the same. You merely follow each other without any imagination,” and he went out, to get the same reply from every horseman he met.
He was firmly convinced that people who have to do with horses all their lives are fools and never think of what is best for the horse, but it rests with men like himself who have “imagination” to show us horsemen how to shoe and handle horses.
CHAPTER XXIV
PECULIARITIES AND FAULTS OF AUTOMATIC PISTOLS