So we rubbed him with turpentine, and next morning he hadn't a hair on his body.
"Colonel Coffin told me that if I wanted to know what really ailed that horse he would tell me.

It was glanders, and if he wasn't bled he would die.

So the colonel bled him for me.

We took away a tubful, and the horse thinned down so that his ribs made him look as if he had swallowed a flour-barrel.
"Then I sent for the horse-doctor, and he said there was nothing the matter with the horse but heaves, and he left some medicine 'to patch up his wind.' The result was that the horse coughed for two days as if he had gone into galloping consumption, and between two of the coughs he kicked the hired man through the partition and bit our black-and-tan terrier in half.
"I thought perhaps a little exercise might improve his health, so I drove him out one day, and he proceeded in such a peculiar manner that I was afraid he might suddenly come apart and fall to pieces.

When we reached the top of White House hill, which is very steep by the side of the road, he stopped, gave a sort of shudder, coughed a couple of times, kicked a fly off his side with his hind leg, and then lay down and calmly rolled over the bank.