The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales | Page 8

summer following, that the incident I am about to relate occurred. It was fly-time,--I remember it well. We were again walking together, when we came to a wall-eyed horse, harnessed to a dog's meat cart, and left standing by his unfeeling master while he indulged in porter and pipes in a small suburban pothouse, much affected by Milesians. The horse was much annoyed by flies, and testified his impatience and suffering by stamping and tossing his head. Mr. Potts was the first to notice that the poor animal had no tail,--for the two or three vertebr? attached to the termination of the spine could hardly be supposed to constitute a tail proper. The discovery filled him with horror. A horse in fly-time without a tail! The case was worse than that of the cow.
"And here I am!" exclaimed the great and good man, in a tone of the bitterest self-reproach, "luxuriating in a pigtail which that poor creature would be glad of!"
With these words he produced a penknife, and placing it in my hands, resolutely bade me amputate his cue. I did so with tears in my eyes, and placed the severed ornament in the hands of my companion. With a piece of tape he affixed it to the horse's stump, and the gush of satisfaction he felt at seeing the first fly despatched by the ingenious but costly substitute for a tail, must have been, I think, an adequate recompense for the sacrifice.
I think it was in that same summer that Mr. Potts laid before the Philanthropic and Humane Society, of which he was an honorable and honorary member, his "plan for the amelioration of the condition of no-tailed horses in fly-time, by the substitution of feather dusters for the natural appendage, to which are added some hints on the grafting of tails with artificial scions, by a retired farrier in ill health."
During the last year of his life, Mr. Potts offered a prize of five thousand dollars for the discovery of a harmless and indelible white paint, to be used in changing the complexion of the colored population, to place them on an equality with ourselves, or for any chemical process which would produce the same result.
Mr. Potts proposed to substitute for capital punishment, houses of seclusion for murderers, where, remote from the world, in rural retreats, they might converse with nature, and in the cultivation of the earth, or the pursuit of botany, might become gradually softened and humanized. At the expiration of a few months' probation, he proposed to restore them to society.
A criminal is an erring brother. The object of punishment is reformation, and not vengeance. Hence, Mr. Potts proposed to supply our prisoners with teachers of languages, arts and sciences, dancing and gymnastics. Every prison should have, he contended, a billiard room and bowling saloon, a hairdresser, and a French cook. Occasionally, accompanied by proper officers, the convicts should be taken to the Italian Opera, or allowed to dance at Papanti's. The object would be so to refine their tastes that they should shrink from theft and murder, simply because they were ungentlemanly. Readmitted to society, these gentlemen would give tone to the upper classes.
But Mr. Potts has gone in the midst of his schemes of usefulness. The tailless quadruped, the shedless cow, the unwhitewashed African, the condemned felon, the unhappy prisoner, actually treated as if he were no gentleman, in him have lost a friend. When shall we see his like again? Echo answers, Probably not for a very long period.

THE GONDOLIER.
O, rest thee here, my gondolier, Rest, rest, while up I go, To climb yon light balcony's height While thou keep'st watch below. Ah! if high Heaven had tongues as well As starry eyes to see-- O, think what tales 'twould hate to tell Of wandering youths like me.
MOORE.
The traveller of to-day who visits Venice sees in that once splendid city nothing but a mass of mouldering palaces, the melancholy remains of former grandeur and magnificence; but few tokens to remind him that she was once the queen of the Adriatic, the emporium of Europe. But at the period of which we write the "sea Cybele" was in the very zenith of her brilliancy and power.
It was the season of carnival, and nowhere else in Italy were the holidays celebrated with such zest and magnificence. By night millions of lamps burned in the palace windows, rivalling the splendors of the firmament, and reflected in the still waters of the lagoons like myriads of stars. Night and day music was resounding. There were regattas, balls, and festas, and the entire population seemed to have gone mad with gayety, and to have lost all thought of the Council of Ten, the Bridge of Signs, and the poniards of the bravoes.
On a bright morning of