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SKETCHES. 305
vegetables ; the servant-maid, who walks home with a
large sucking-pig in her arms; the little girl, who buys
a half measure of potatoes, an onion and three turnips, a
pennyworth of parsley and rusks, a skein of cotton thread,
a piece of gingerbread anda Danish lollipop, and stows it
all away in her little bag, or “pirate,” of plaited straw;
the urchin, who thumbs all the apples before he buys one —
you know all these figures, and can see them every day in
every market here in town. But what you do not see every
day nor everywhere, is a little man, walking upon four legs,
and accompanied by three large dogs. Him I saw just
now crossing the market-place upon two wooden legs and
two legs of flesh and bone paralyzed. It is the horse-
butcher, or rather horse-friend and poet, Ekeblad, an orig-
inal; and it would be well if we had many such in this
town and in the world, not only for the sake of the poor
horses, but also for the sake of those people who suffer
pain by seeing them treated with cruelty.
For it was his love for the brute creation, and his sym-
pathy with that noble animal, the horse, which first induced
Mr. Ekeblad to wander through our streets and market-
places like a missionary, to preach amongst cabmen and
other horse-tormentors, kindness to animals. They shut
their ears to him and abused him. The horse-friend then
began lecturing to the better,classes on the treatment of
animals —especially the horse. He only got laughed at,
and was left to lecture to empty walls. The Swedes are
not more harsh or cruel than other nations; but we have
not here, as in other civilized countries, any laws for the
prevention of cruelty to animals,’ nor has attention been
publicly directed to their characteristics, their merits, their
sufferings — to “the sighs of the animals.”
Yet there are in this country many women and men who
silently feel these “sighs.” Foremost amongst these latter
stands Mr. Ekeblad, for he has not only thought and pub-
1 Such Jaws do now exist since the year 1857.
20
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