which in life made the human heart more serene and the human mind more receptive has deepened the green of the leaves and made somewhat more hospitable the leafy bowers that form the home haunts of singing birds. Other willows, gracious and noble, hold high their wavy branches in the beautiful valley, but to me at least this willow is invested with a tenderness, bathed with a beauty, and clothed with a suggestiveness denied the others.

The trees and the flowers, the shaded roadside, the happy cattle in the clover fields, the morning song of the birds, the searching and far-reaching cry of the whip-poor-will, the busy, kind, human folk, are still left for me in my summer haunts, but I shall ever miss that silent companionship that for four summers went with me over the hills and dales of Wisconsin, through the haunts of busy men, into the solitudes of busier nature. Jess, my companion of many hundreds of miles of happy travel, will accompany me no more in my quest for bodily strength, mental clearness, and spiritual peace. Her elastic step will not disturb the morning dew; her dainty ear will not catch the noonday

hum of the reaper; her alert eye will not scan the evening horizon with unfeigned anxiety to find the big barn or the country hamlet that would give us the hearty meal and well-earned slumber of the night. Something has gone out of those hills and valleys, out of the world, never to return. But Jess abides, at least in one heart made more open to fellowship, more tender to suffering, and more quick to feel the woes of all sentient beings. May I hope she will still live in this story of mine, to plead with others for thoughtfulness and kindliness to that noble animal, the horse?

I offer no apology for this intrusion upon your attention with so commonplace a theme; indeed, I do not think you will so consider it. I believe you have already discovered the purpose of this narrative, too personal though it may be. I have told it because I would fain awaken through it a deeper appreciation of the marvellous and the beautiful revealed in the horse, which I regard as one of the noblest products of nature. All things considered, I believe that the climax of animal mechanism among quadrupeds is reached in the horse. He is a living dynamo, a battery of force, accurate, responsive,

intelligent, loyal. His defence lies in his swiftness. He has held his place in the struggle for existence by virtue of his timidity, and yet cowboys and cavalrymen train their horses so that they will lie down and let their masters shoot over them; so that they will carry the cannon before whose fire they learn to stand unintimidated. Well does the Koran call the horse "a condensation of the south-west wind." And the same book represents the Deity as saying to the horse, "Thou shalt be for man a source of happiness and wealth; thy back shall be a seat of honor, and thy belly of riches; every grain of barley given to thee shall purchase indulgence for the sinner." The Arabian legends say, "The finest horses are needed in heaven to carry angels." In the Hebrew legend, fiery horses carried Elijah to the sky. Indeed, we must turn

to the high poetry of the

Bible to find the finest

description of this noble animal. Note the incomparable lines of Job:

"Hast thou given the horse strength?

Hast thou clothed his neck with his trembling mane?
Hast thou taught him to bound like the locust?

How majestic his snorting! how terrible!

He paweth in the valley; he exulteth in his strength,

And rusheth into the midst of arms.
He laugheth at fear; he trembleth not,
And turneth not back from the sword.
Against him rattle the quiver,

The flaming spear, and the lance.
With rage and fury he devoureth the ground;
He will not believe that the trumpet soundeth.
At every blast of the trumpet, he saith, Aha!
And snuffeth the battle afar off,

The thunder of the captains, and the war-shout.'

Under the old Saxon law, the damage caused by destroying a horse was thirty shillings; an ox, thirty pence; a pig, eightpence, and a man, twenty shillings. In the laws of Hywel dda, Howell-the-Good, the great Cambrian law-giver of the ninth century, there were penalties for working a blistered horse: fourpence when the hair was rubbed off, eightpence if the skin was forced into the flesh, sixteenpence if the flesh was forced to the bone. Under this law a horse must not be fastened to a plough, so high was his dignity.

How interwoven with the story of human valor is that of the valiant horse! The great Alexander, the conqueror of worlds, fitted himself for his life's work by breaking colts. The boy tamed the high-mettled Bucephalus by turn

ing his head from his own shadow and giving him the road. The Cid, the indomitable, provided in his will that Bavieca, his old charger, should be buried in a deep grave. "For," said he, “a shameful thing it were that he should be eaten by dogs." It was a horse that carried the white-plumed knight, Henry of Navarre, into the thickest of the fight. Richard the Lionhearted had his "White Surrey," William III. his "Sorrel," and Wellington, the great "Iron Duke," had his "Copenhagen." General Taylor rides through the pages of history on "Old Whitey." Grant's horse was trusted next to his rider. Robert E. Lee's spirit entered into his faithful veteran horse "Traveller," and the fame of Phil Sheridan is no safer than that of

"The steed that saved the day

By carrying Sheridan into the fight

From Winchester, twenty miles away."

And still the horse is daily abused, overloaded, underfed, beaten by cruel drivers, gagged, nagged, and maimed by women whose silliness leads to atrocities as brutal as those of the drayman. The inhumanities of the docked tail, and the barbarities of the over-check, are paraded on our boulevards every hour of the day by so-called