When you come to the standard of moral measurement, it may be claimed as among the highest of human as well as animal virtues, "to learn to suffer and be strong." And this virtue the donkey has learned and practised incomparably beyond any other creature that ever walked on four legs since the Flood.

Let these good people remember that their fanciful and romantic favoritisms are not to rule in the destinies awarded to the infinitesimally human spirits of domestic animals in another world, if another be in reserve for them.

Let them remember that their softly-cushioned dogs, and horses so delicately clad, and fed, and fondled, have had a pretty good time of it in this life, and that in another, the poor, despised, abused donkey, going about begging, with such a long and melancholy face, for withered cabbage leaves and woody-grained turnips cast out and trodden under feet of happier animals,--that this meek little creature, kicked, cuffed, and club-beaten all the way from hopeless youth to an ignominious grave, will carry into another world merits and mementoes of his earthly lot that will obtain, if not entitle him to, some compensation in the award of a future condition.

It is treading on delicate ground even to set one foot within the pale of their unscriptural theory; but as many of them hold the Christian faith in pureness of living and doctrine, let me remind them of that parable which shows so impressively how the disparities in human condition here are reversed in the destinies of the great hereafter.
But, to return to the earthly lot and position of this poor, libelled animal.

Among all the four-footed creatures domesticated to the service of man, this has always been the veriest scapegoat and victim of the cruellest and crabbedest of human dispositions.
Truly, it has ever been born unto sorrow, bearing all its life long a weight of abuse and contumely which would break the heart of a less sensitive animal in a single week.