Thoughts of a Farmer: XIII, Caught in the Horse Stall

XIII — Caught in the Horse Stall

One evening after the day's work, I heard a moan and a call

for help from a distant stall where one of my men was unhar-

nessing one of his teams. I rushed from my work to discover the.

trouble. Between the partition of the stall and a large horse, a

man, "Shortie," as we called him, was being almost squeezed to

death. After rescuing him I wanted to know the cause of his

plight.

"Well, the horse would not stand over when I told him to,

and I used this stick on him. He crowded in on me, and pinned

me against the partition," came the reply from an almost ex-

hausted breath.

Horses have a sense of self-preservation. They do not al-

ways move quickly in response to a command. It takes time for

a horse to underatariil, and Shortie was too impatient to await

the delayed movement. The horse was tied, and next to him in

the same stall stood another horse. His situation was also crit-

ical, but his horse sense, or instinct, if you please to give it that

name, taught him that tixe closer he was to the stick the less it

hurt him. It is a rule of the stable that horses shall not be pun-

ished in their stalls. They not only break things, but their dis-

positions are greatly aggravated by such punishment. Orders,

however, don't count for much when men are mad; and mad-

ness, when created by impatience, is generally of a violent type.

Shortie was badly hurt, and dragged himself into a corner

where he lay down.

How often in life impatience leads men into such unequal

contests as to make their defeat certain ! No worse fault exists in

dealing with horses, than the disposition to act under the influ-

ence of impatience and the anger it begets. The power of pa-

tience is lost, and the horse sooner or later gets the upper hand.

Why do men invite a contest, when the odds are against

them? A contest often settles down to a squeezing process in

which men find themselves against an immovable obstacle, and

pressed by forces they cannot hope to escape. There are forces

in life — social, economic, and physical, that surround all life.

Their pressure almost stifles the life of man. Many such forces

are apparently unavoidable, but they exist everywhere. To ag-

538 IMPROVEMENT ERA

gravate such pressure is the height of folly. If impatience in-

vites the pressure from which men suffer, it would seem to fol-

low that the exercise of patience is the best of remedies. This

is an age of haste which invites all sorts of evils. All nature is

regular, methodical, and constant. The farther men remove

themselves from an orderly life, the greater the troubles which

they bring upon themselves. Pressure, painful pressure, in all

its forms, is perhaps the greatest source of irritation and suf-

fering in the world today. It is often unconsciously imposed.

In the financial world, the pressure with which people are af-

flicted is often more agonizing than bodily damages from which

they suffer. Many a man in his financial distress is compelled

to shorten his breath, and many creep off in a corner where they

suffer and sometimes die.

When "pressure is brought to bear" to force some particular

conduct in life, men should see that it does not become danger-

ous by reason of their inability to retreat, or to escape a partition

in the stall which is likely to encompass them! If Shortie had

taken time to consider the risk of his position, he would not have

been caught. Like others, he did not stop to think; he left no

means of escape. The pressure from which men suffer in life

would be much less harmful, if they were careful to prepare

some means of escape. Ability to retreat is good tactics in the

ordinary conditions of life, even as it is in war.