Another agricultural friend owned a colt endowed with uncommon beauty and intelligence. He was about a year and a half old when he first saw a string of bells suspended round his mother’s neck when she was harnessed for a drive. The novel sound immediately arrested his attention, and seemed to enliven him greatly. He stood with uplifted ears, watching and listening, till the sleigh had passed out of sight and hearing; then, giving a snort and a rear, he capered round the barn-yard, in a state of unusual excitement. When the mare returned, the sound of the bells attracted him from afar, and he appeared to observe them closely when they were taken off and laid in the sleigh with the harness. As soon as the man had left them, the playful creature seized them between his teeth and trotted up and down the road, shaking them with prodigious satisfaction. This manner of playing old horse was evidently as entertaining to him, as it is to a boy to imitate the trainers with his feathered cap and drum. The natural dispositions of animals differ, as do those of mankind; but the intelligence and docility of brutes, as well as of human beings, is wonderfully increased when they are judiciously reared, and treated with habitual kindness. It is not easy to tell how far the superiority of Arabian horses may be attributed to the affectionate companionship that exists between them and their masters. The whip is a detestable instrument. The evil it produces is immensely disproportioned to the temporary convenience it promotes. It compels submission for the time being; but it stupefies the intellect, and infuses malignity into the disposition, whether tried on children, slaves, or animals. The common practice of whipping a horse, to cure him of being frightened by some particular object, usually has the effect of giving him two causes of fear, instead of one. I remember reading of a much more judicious method, in Mrs. Hamilton’s Essays on Education, published in England about thirty years ago. A horse of an excellent disposition had been frightened by a drum, when he was a colt, and nothing could overcome his excessive terror of that instrument. The whippings he received, when he reared and plunged at the sound, rendered his associations with it so exceedingly painful, that his whole nervous system was excited to violent agitation, the instant he heard it approaching. He was finally purchased by a gentleman, who believed more in the efficacy of kindness, than he did in coercion. He kept him without food till he was hungry, and then spread oats on a drum-head. As soon as he began to eat, the groom began to drum. The frightened animal ran away, and could not be lured back again by the tempting display of provender. He was deprived of food for a still longer time, and the experiment was again tried with similar result. But the third time, hunger proved stronger than fear, and he devoured his oats with the hated noise sounding louder and louder in his ears.