An old farmer once said, "What a year it must have been for colts seven
years ago this spring." No person who has never attempted to buy a horse
can appreciate the remark, but if he will let it be known that he wants to
buy a good horse, he will be struck with the circumstance that all the
horses that are of any particular account were born seven years ago.
Occasionally there is one that is six years old, but they are not plenty,
Now, those of us who lived around here seven years ago did not have our
attention called to the fact that the country was flooded with colts.
There were very few twin colts, and it was seldom that a mother had half a
dozen colts following her. Farmers and stock raisers did not go round
worrying about what they were going to do with so many colts. The papers,
if we recollect right, were not filled with accounts of the extraordinary
number of colts born. And yet it must have been a terrible year for colts,
because there are only six horses in Milwaukee that are over seven years
old, but one of them was found to have been pretty well along in years
when he worked in Burnham's brick yard in 1848, and finally the owner
owned up that he was mistaken twenty-six years. What a mortality there
must have been among horses that would now be eight, nine or ten years
old. There are none of them left. And a year from now, when our present
stock of horses would naturally be eight years old they will all be dead,
and a new lot of seven years old horses will take their places. It is
singular, but it is true. That is, it is true unless horse dealers lie,
and THE SUN would be slow to charge so grave a crime upon a useful and
enterprising class of citizens. No, it cannot be, and yet, don't it seem
peculiar that all the horses in this broad land are seven years old this
spring? We leave the suject for the youth of the land to wonder over,