no harder lot could have fallen upon a horse than that which befell me. the night-work of cab horses is bad at the best, but mine was worse than the ordinary lot of these unfortunate creatures. i was driven by a man named stevens—a coarse, brutal fellow, who could not drive a yard without using the whip and supplementing his cruelty with bitter oaths.
then my work was in the night, when fallen man shows up at his worst. oh! the sad scenes i have witnessed! the dreadful things i have heard! when the dark mantle has fallen upon the earth, vice comes out boldly and walks under the stars as if there were no great witness of its infamy far above. then man comes out of the dark alleys and robs and plunders, and does desperate deeds of violence to others who stagger homeward soddened with drink. then it is we hear the lewd song, the bitter blasphemy, the oath and curse and shriek for help. then it is that woman, lost to everything but a defiant determination to live on through her shame, crawls 84about the streets, sinking lower and lower every moment of her life. do the shameless and vicious think that night screens their evil deeds? is it possible that they can think it less sinful to act under the starlight than under the broad beams of the midday sun; or is it that vice and folly cannot, dare not come out and face the pure golden light in the sky? oh, man! have you forgotten that night was given to rest in, and not to riot away? better be in your graves than out and doing the things i have seen you perform.
i shrink from any further record of this time—sad and cruel for me from the first, and sad and cruel still; but in the darkness, standing by the hour together in the chill fog, who could marvel that this old body sank under it, and that i am broken in health? i am not so old a horse in actual years; but misfortune, neglect, and ill-usage have brought me to the end of my life long before my time.
last night, while dragging a fare up ludgate hill, my head suddenly swam round, and i staggered and fell. when i came to, there was a small knot of night prowlers around me, and stevens the driver was kicking my ribs with his heavy boots. i got up somehow, and i staggered on, half-blind, and every bone in my body aching most terribly. the fare left the cab in cannon street, and shortly after i fell again. i did not faint, but i lay utterly helpless and exhausted. stevens kicked me until he was tired; but i could not rise for half an hour or more, and when i did scramble to my feet i could not drag the cab, and stevens, putting it under shelter, led me home.
i heard him tell mr. crabbe what had befallen me, and the livery stable keeper positively laughed—think of it, my friends, the man laughed at my misery and the brutality of the driver!
‘it must have come sooner or later,’ i heard mr. crabbe say; ‘he has lasted longer than i expected. as you go home tell the knacker to give me a look up to-morrow.’
i heard my sentence almost without a quiver. i was so worn-out, so reduced by pain, so weary of my existence, that i had no wish to exist. better die a thousand times than live on as i have lived during the past six months.
85
poor blossom’s last days.
87i was resigned, but with my resignation came a sense of gross injustice. i had toiled all the days of my life for man, and when worn-out and broken, doomed to die in a knacker’s yard! it may be just—man is wiser than i am; but it seemed hard to end one’s days in such a place.
in the midst of my gloom a thought arose which gives me consolation to this moment—i have done my duty. none of my masters, from the first to the last, can accuse me of having shirked my work or shown the least disposition to vice; and there is a companion thought to it which gives me further comfort—i am sure that many of those who knew me, most of them ignorant of my fate, will speak kindly of me when i am gone, and say a good word for poor blossom.
i have a hope too—a hope which i hold close to my heart—and that is of rip, dear, noble rip, roaming over the paddock i know so well, with the gentle stream flowing at its base, and the old water-mill turning in the sunlight, and the song of the lark and the hum of the bee in his ear, and the sweet-scented clover throwing its perfume into his grateful nostrils. as you wander thus, oh, noble rip, i hope—ah, know—that you will sometimes think of your old friend, who served mankind all his life, and died by the knacker’s hand!
