Nature's riddles, or, the battle of the beasts / H.W. Shepheard-Walwyn.

  • Hugh Wallwyn Shepheard-Walwyn
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nature's riddles, or, the battle of the beasts / H.W. Shepheard-Walwyn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    which deplorable fate he will doubtless perform his last act in the service of the masters for whom he worked so nobly and endured so patiently. Surely he deserves a better fate ! Look upon him, I say ; and it is indeed difficult to recognise that this miserable, ill-used, skeleton-like specimen of lamentable degradation even belongs to the same race as the magnificent creature which, with flashing eye and streaming mane, roams at will over the boundless plains of his native prairie, little recking of curb or bridle, but rather rejoicing in his absolute freedom, and revelling in the con- sciousness of his perfect strength. Look at yonder patient cattle, plodding along the dusty road on their way to the market. Think you that they shudder as they enter those grim portals, or realise their impending fate ? There go a little group of sheep on their way to a similar destiny. At their head is a splendid ram—one of the finest of his race—walking a little in front of the others as if conscious that he is their rightful leader. We may picture him an hour later, quietly awaiting his doom, and we wonder, does he shrink from the fatal blow ? Far from it. Calmly he stands upon the scaffold, and waits with a brave unconcern for the henchman’s axe to sever his little thread of life. Perhaps in that brief moment he has a glimpse of what he might have been—the monarch
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