tablemen or kennelmen, and be cheated
on all hands, by the real aristocracy of those pursuits who were regularly
born to the business.

"All this, I say, is a tribute to our superiority, which I consider to be
very remarkable. Yet, still I can't quite understand it. Man can hardly
devote himself to us, in admiration of our virtues, because he never
imitates them. We horses are as honest, though I say it, as animals can
be. If, under the pressure of circumstances, we submit to act at a circus,
for instance, we always show that we are acting. We never deceive any
body. We would scorn to do it. If we are called upon to do any thing in
earnest, we do our best. If we are required to run a race falsely, and to
lose when we could win, we are not to be relied upon to commit a fraud;
man must come in at that point, and force us to it. And the extraordinary
circumstance to me is, that man (whom I take to be a powerful species of
monkey) is always making us nobler animals the instruments of his meanness
and cupidity. The very name of our kind has become a byword for all sorts
of trickery and cheating. We are as innocent as counters at a game--and yet
this creature WILL play falsely with us!

"Man's opinion, good or bad, is not worth much, as any rational horse
knows. But justice is justice; and what I complain of is, that mankind
talks of us as if we had something to do with all this. They say that such
a man was 'ruined by horses.' Ruined by horses! They can't be open, even
in that, and say he was ruined by men; but they lay it at _our_
stable-door! As if we ever ruined any body, or were ever doing any thing
but being ruined ourselves, in our generous desire to fulfill the useful
purposes of our existence!

"In the same way, we get a bad name, as if we were profligate company. 'So
and so got among horses, and it was all up with him.' Why, _we_ would have
reclaimed him--_we_ would have made him temperate, industrious, punctual,
steady, sensible--what harm would he ever have got from _us_, I should wish
to ask?

"Upon the whole, speaking of him as I have found him, I should describe
man as an unmeaning and conceited creature, very seldom to be trusted, and
not likely to make advances toward the honesty of the nobler animals. I
should say that his power of warping the nobler animals to bad purposes,
and damaging their reputation by his companionship, is, next to the art of
growing oats, hay, carrots, and clover, one of his princi