--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Joseph M. Tanner collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 21 number: 6 published: 1918-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Joseph M. Tanner, “Thoughts of a Farmer: XIII—Caught in the Horse Stall,” *Improvement Era* 21, no. 6 (April 1918): 537–538." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2106unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2106unse start_page: 537 end_page: 538 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1918-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2106unse publication_year: 1918 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1918, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # 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.