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In case you can't read that, I'm going to transcribe it. And in case you can read it, I'm still going to transcribe it, because it needs to be read as many times as humanly possible.

I have spent much of a long life in the observation of horses. I have reared them, broken them, trained them, ridden them, driven them in every form from the plow to four-in-hand. The result of these years of study is summed up in one sentence -- I believe the horse to be part maniac and part idiot.

To middle school and high school students reading this, that opening is a perfect example of a great thesis statement you can use as an example the next time you have to write a five-paragraph essay.

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Every horse at some time in his life develops into a homicidal maniac.

And then he goes right off into horse madness.

I believe any man who trusts himself or his family to the power of a horse stronger than himself to be lacking in common sense and wholly devoid of ordinary prudence, writes a Kentuckian to Harper's Weekly.

To be fair, it doesn't sound like this guy's against all horses as much as he is against the use of strong horses. He'd prefer if people who were moving from Wyoming to California in their covered wagons use weak, wheezing, pathetic horses covered in flies and reeking of their own impending doom to haul their 20 children across multiple states.

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I have driven one commonplace horse every other day for six years over the same road and then had him go crazy and try to kill himself and me because a leaf fluttered down in front of him. I have known scores of horses, apparently trustworthy, apparently creatures of routine, go wild and insane over equally regular and recurring phenomena. No amount of observation can tell when the brute will break out. One mare took two generations of children to school over the same quiet road and then in her nineteenth year went crazy because a rooster crowed alongside the road. She killed two of the children. If anyone can tell me of one good reason why man should trust a horse, I should be glad to know.