' We'll not go to him again.
''Tis hard to teach an old dog new tricks.' I got you to work for me,
not to wear 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.
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