he forced
action of its own intellect--poor thing! obliged to play cards with its
fore-foot, teach geography, and cipher out numbers like a
schoolmaster--and then say if ignorance isn't bliss! Look in the little
black eyes of the animal, and see the sad and hungry look that knowledge
has brought to him!

To know is to want--to want is to suffer.

Where was I? Speaking about horses, naturally I wandered off down to
other grades of animals--the laziest, largest, best-natured creatures of
all--but, as you may observe with propriety, not suggestive of
horse-races, which I admit and apologize for.

Well, right or wrong, I have been to the races at Jerome Park, which is
a hollow among the hills, clear out of New York, and the other side of
Harlem River. There, every spring and fall, the best horses owned about
here are set a-going like wildfire, and the one that beats is thought
the world of.

The park isn't much of a piece of woods, after all; a good-sized maple
camp in Vermont has got twice as many trees, but then a good deal of it
is turned out to grass. Then, again, a level turnpike curls in a ring
all round one of the hills, and on the top of that is a kind of hotel,
or long tavern, with a tremendous stoop stretched around it, where the
upper-crust of fast horsedom crowd in to see the creatures run.

On the other hillside, right against the tavern, is a great long, open
shed, with seats after seats sloping down from the inside, where the
lower-crust of fast horsedom crowd in from the railroads, and so on.
They have to pay for going in, but, for all that, haven't a right to go
across to the upper side, which must be aggravating.

All the men that go to the upper-crust tavern wear a huge round thing
with a ribbon fastened to their coats, and strut awfully under them, as
if they were the crowning glory of all creation. Maybe they are; I don't
know, not being highly educated in horsiness.

Well, Cousin Dempster has one of these medals, which he hitched to the
lappel of his coat that morning. Cousin E. E. had been fidgeting awfully
all the week about a dress she was bent on wearing, and when it didn't
come home from the dress-maker's till late the night before, I really
thought she would take a fit right before us all. But the dress came at
last, and then she wheeled right round the other way with joy.

"Such a dress!" says she. "There won't be anything to match it. All my
own idea, too"

Here she tumbled a catarac