be curried was to tie him up at both ends, and the only way he could be
harnessed was to toss the harness on him with a pitch fork.

The horse, with his head tied up so high that he could not use it,
looked down at the humane man with one eye filled with emotion--the
other eye had been knocked out years ago--and seemed to be thanking
the kind-hearted citizen for interfering in the matinee and causing
hostilities to be suspended. The humane man was touched by the
intelligent look of the horse, and insisted that the animal be untied
and allowed its freedom. The boy said he didn't dare untie him, for he
would kick the side of the barn out, but the man insisted that he should
release the horse, and went up to his head to do so, when the boy went
through the manure hole in the side of the barn.

What happened when the humane citizen untied the halter will perhaps
never be definitely known, but no sooner had the boy struck the ground
through the hole, than there was a sound of revelry in the barn, there
came a yell through the crevices, there seemed to be a company of
cavalry drilling on the barn floor, there was a sound as of cloth
tearing, and then it appeared as though something was climbing up the
inside of the barn, and after which the hind heels of the horse could be
heard playing the snare drum on the manger. The boy roused the neighbors
and they armed themselves and entered the barn. They found the horse in
the stall, with its head where its tail should be, with its mouth full
of pantaloons cloth, and kicking away as though its heart would break.

And the humane man, where, O, where was he? Ask of the winds that far
around with fragments of hat and coat tail strewed the barn floor.

"Shoot the horse." said a faint voice from the upper part of the barn,
and every eye was turned in that direction. The humane man was up there,
clinging to a cross piece. He had evidently gone up the ladder which
led to the hay loft, a little ahead of the horse, and as he clung to the
cross piece, his coat tail gone, and the vital part of his pantaloons
and some skin gone to that bourne from whence no pantaloons seat
returns, his bald head covered with dust and cobwebs, he was a picture
of meekness.

The crowd got the horse into another stall, head first, and put bars
across, and the humane man came down from his perch. Seizing a barn
shovel, and spitting on his hands, he asked his friends to wait and
watch him curry off that horse jus