and that _habitual_ acts of cruelty to
other creatures, will, nine times out of ten, produce, when the power is
possessed, cruelty to human beings. The ill-usage of _horses_, and
particularly _asses_, is a grave and a just charge against this nation.
No other nation on earth is guilty of it to the same extent. Not only by
_blows_, but by privation, are we cruel towards these useful, docile,
and patient creatures; and especially towards the last, which is the
most docile and patient and laborious of the two, while the food that
satisfies it, is of the coarsest and least costly kind, and in quantity
so small! In the habitual ill-treatment of this animal, which, in
addition to all its labours, has the milk taken from its young ones to
administer a remedy for our ailments, there is something that bespeaks
_ingratitude_ hardly to be described. In a REGISTER that I wrote from
Long Island, I said, that amongst all the things of which I had been
bereft, I regretted no one so much as a very diminutive _mare_, on which
my children had all, in succession, learned to ride. She was become
useless for them, and, indeed, for any other purpose; but the
recollection of her was so entwined with so many past circumstances,
which, at that distance, my mind conjured up, that I really was very
uneasy, lest she should fall into cruel hands. By good luck, she was,
after a while, turned out on the wide world to shift for herself; and
when we got back, and had a place for her to _stand_ in, from her native
forest we brought her to Kensington, and she is now at Barn-Elm, about
twenty-six years old, and I dare say, as fat as a mole. Now, not only
have I no moral _right_ (considering my ability to pay for keep) to
deprive her of life; but it would be _unjust_ and _ungrateful_, in me to
withhold from her sufficient food and lodging to make life as pleasant
as possible while that life last.

297. In the meanwhile the book-learning _crept in_ of its own accord, by
imperceptible degrees. Children naturally want to be _like_ their
parents, and _to do what they do_: the boys following their father, and
the girls their mother; and as I was always _writing_ or _reading_, mine
naturally desired to do something in the same way. But, at the same
time, they heard no talk from _fools_ or _drinkers_; saw me with no
idle, gabbling, empty companions; saw no vain and affected coxcombs, and
no tawdry and extravagant women; saw no nasty gormandizing; and heard no
gab