[A Walk from London to John O’Groat’s by Elihu Burritt]@TWC D-Link book
A Walk from London to John O’Groat’s

CHAPTER V
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It costs but very little to keep them, and they will do all kinds of work up to the draught of 600 or 800 lbs.

You frequently see here a span of them trotting off in a cart, with brisk and even step.
Sometimes they are put on as leaders to a team of horses.

I once saw on my walk a heavy Lincolnshire horse in the shafts, a pony next, and a donkey at the head, making a team graduated from 18 hands to 6 in height; and all pulling evenly, and apparently keeping step with each other, notwithstanding the disparity in the length of their legs.
It would be unjust to that goodwill to man and beast which is being organised and stimulated in England through an infinite number of societies, if I should omit to state that, at last, a little rill of this benevolence has reached the donkey.

That most valuable and widely-circulated penny magazine, "The British Workman," and its little companion for British workmen's children, "The Band of Hope Review," have advocated the rights and better treatment of this humble domestic for several years.

His cause has also been pleaded in a packet of little papers called "Leaflets of the Law of Kindness for the Children." And now, at last, a wealthy and benevolent champion, on whom the mantle of Elizabeth Fry, his aunt, has fallen, has taken the lead in the work of raising the useful creature to the level of the other animals of the pasture, stable, and barn-yard.
Up to the present time, every creature that walks on four or two legs, either haired, woolled, or feathered, with the single exception of the donkey has had the door of the Agricultural Exhibition thrown wide open to it, to enter the lists for prizes or "honorable mention," and for general admiration.


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