Jump to content

Page:Horses and roads.djvu/145

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
129

CHAPTER XIV.

LUDGATE HILL ONLY RISES ABOUT FOUR FEET IN EVERY HUNDRED—SOCIETIES—THE BEARING REIN ONLY REQUIRED ON CRIPPLES.

Ludgate Hill is not Moirosi’s Mountain, but, after all, is only a gentle ascent of about half an inch in the foot, over a length of about two hundred yards, up which unshod omnibus horses would trot with a full load in any weather. Yet there it must remain, a chief thoroughfare in the heart of London, a perennial cause of complaint, and of fear, disgust, and injury to man and horse. It is of no use to keep eternally grumbling at it, or proposing inefficient remedies; it must be tackled in a rational manner by not irrationally opposing two slippery surfaces to each other, and then the difficulty would be vanquished.

Humane and well meaning, but it is to be feared not eminently practical, people have formed themselves into various corporate bodies, either with the view of protecting the horse from injury by man, or else man from injury by the horse, when in the legitimate exercise of his daily toil. Philanthropic and philozoic individuals have taken the donkey