. Sometimes the doctor hires
me, and I stand at twenty doors waiting for invalids to rehearse all
their pains. Then the minister hires me, and I have to stay till Mrs.
Tittle-Tattle has time to tell the dominie all the disagreeable things of
the parish.

The other night, after our owner had gone home and the hostlers were
asleep, we held an indignation meeting in our livery stable. "Old Sorrel"
presided, and there was a long line of vice-presidents and secretaries,
mottled bays and dappled grays and chestnuts, and Shetland and Arabian
ponies. "Charley," one of the old inhabitants of the stable, began a
speech, amid great stamping on the part of the audience. But he soon
broke down for lack of wind. For five years he had been suffering with
the "heaves." Then "Pompey," a venerable nag, took his place; and though
he had nothing to say, he held out his spavined leg, which dramatic
posture excited the utmost enthusiasm of the audience. "Fanny Shetland,"
the property of a lady, tried to damage the meeting by saying that horses
had no wrongs. She said, "Just look at my embroidered blanket. I never go
out when the weather is bad. Everybody who comes near pats me on the
shoulder. What can be more beautiful than going out on a sunshiny
afternoon to make an excursion through the park, amid the clatter of the
hoofs of the stallions? I walk, or pace, or canter, or gallop, as I
choose. Think of the beautiful life we live, with the prospect, after our
easy work is done, of going up and joining Elijah's horses of fire."

Next, I took the floor, and said that I was born in a warm, snug
Pennsylvania barn; was, on my father's side, descended from Bucephalus;
on my mother's side, from a steed that Queen Elizabeth rode in a steeple
chase. My youth was passed in clover pastures and under trusses of
sweet-smelling hay. I flung my heels in glee at the farmer when he came
to catch me. But on a dark day I was over-driven, and my joints
stiffened, and my fortunes went down, and my whole family was sold. My
brother, with head down and sprung in the knees, pulls the street car. My
sister makes her living on the tow path, hearing the canal boys swear. My
aunt died of the epizooetic. My uncle--blind, and afflicted with the bots,
the ringbone and the spring-halt--wanders about the commons, trying to
persuade somebody to shoot him. And here I stand, old and sick, to cry
out against