ar out your strength in lifting about his weighty shoes."

Mr. Wood stopped talking for a few minutes, and whistled a tune. Then
he began again. "I've made a study of horses, Joe. Over forty years I've
studied them, and it's my opinion that the average horse knows more than
the average man that drives him. When I think of the stupid fools that
are goading patient horses about, beating them and misunderstanding
them, and thinking they are only clods of earth with a little life in
them, I'd like to take their horses out of the shafts and harness them
in, and I'd trot them off at a pace, and slash them, and jerk them,
till I guess they'd come out with a little less patience than the animal
does.

"Look at this Dutchman see the size of him. You'd think he hadn't any
more nerves than a bit of granite. Yet he's got a skin as sensitive as a
girl's. See how he quivers if I run the curry comb too harshly over him.
The idiot I got him from didn't know what was the matter with him. He'd
bought him for a reliable horse, and there he was, kicking and stamping
whenever the boy went near him. 'Your boy's got too heavy a hand, Deacon
Jones,' said I, when he described the horse's actions to me. 'You may
depend upon it, a four-legged creature, unlike a two-legged one, has a
reason for everything he does.' 'But he's only a draught horse,' said
Deacon Jones. 'Draught horse or no draught horse,' said I, 'you're
describing a horse with a tender skin to me, and I don't care if he's as
big as an elephant.' Well, the old man grumbled and said he didn't
want any thoroughbred airs in his stable, so I bought you, didn't I,
Dutchman?" and Mr. Wood stroked him kindly and went to the next stall.

In each stall was a small tank of water with a sliding cover, and I
found out afterward that these covers were put on when a horse came in
too heated to have a drink. At any other time, he could drink all he
liked. Mr. Wood believed in having plenty of pure water for all his
animals and they all had their own place to get a drink.

Even I had a little bowl of water in the woodshed, though I could easily
have run up to the barnyard when I wanted a drink. As soon as I came,
Mrs. Wood asked Adele to keep it there for me and when I looked up
gratefully at her, she said: "Every animal should have its own feeding
place and its own sleeping place, Joe; that is only fair."

The next horses Mr. Wood groomed were the black ones, Cleve and Pacer.
Pacer had somethin