Mrs. Mary Somerville wrote these words at the age of eighty-nine: “If
animals have no future, the existence of many is most wretched.
Multitudes are starved, cruelly beaten, and loaded during life; many die
under a barbarous vivisection. I can not believe that any creature was
created for uncompensated misery; it would be contrary to the attributes
of God’s mercy and justice. I am sincerely happy to find that I am not
the only believer in the immortality of the lower animals.” Lamartine
has the same thought in an address to his dog, and many other wise men
have hoped that such a future was a reality.
The Rev. Henry Storrs says it is wisest to treat animals kindly,
because, if we are ever to meet them again, it will be pleasanter to
have them on our side.
Henry Ward Beecher many times owned his love for horses, as in his one
novel, Norwood:
“I tell you,” said Hiram, turning slightly toward the doctor, “these
horses are jest as near human as is good for ’em. A good horse has sense
jest as much as a man has; and he’s proud, too, and he loves to be
praised, and he knows when you treat him with respect. A good horse has
the best p’ints of a man without his failin’s.”
“What do you think becomes of horses, Hiram, when they die?” said Rose.
“Wal, Miss Rose, it’s my opinion that there’s use for horses hereafter,
and that you’ll find there’s a horse-heaven. There’s Scripture for that,
too.”
“Ah!” said Rose, a little surprised at these confident assertions. “What
Scripture do you mean?”
“Why, in the Book of Revelation! Don’t it give an account of a white
horse, and a red horse, and black horses, and gray horses? I’ve allers
s’posed that when it said Death rode on a pale horse, it must have been
gray, ’cause it had mentioned white once already. In the ninth chapter,
too, it says there was an army of two hundred thousand horsemen. Now, I
should like to know where they got so many horses in heaven, if none of
’em that die off here go there? It’s my opinion that a good horse’s a
darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad man!”
When we see the superiority of a noble horse to his brutal or drunken
driver, it seems at least possible, and most of us have lost some pet
that we would rather meet again than the majority of our acquaintances.
Helen Barron Bostwick, after “burying her pretty brown mare under the
cherry tree,” inquires:
Is this the end?
Do you know?
and closes her poem as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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