With these words he produced a penknife, and placing it in my hands,
resolutely bade me amputate his cue. I did so with tears in my eyes,
and placed the severed ornament in the hands of my companion. With a
piece of tape he affixed it to the horse's stump, and the gush of
satisfaction he felt at seeing the first fly despatched by the
ingenious but costly substitute for a tail, must have been, I think,
an adequate recompense for the sacrifice.

I think it was in that same summer that Mr. Potts laid before the
Philanthropic and Humane Society, of which he was an honorable and
honorary member, his "plan for the amelioration of the condition of
no-tailed horses in fly-time, by the substitution of feather dusters
for the natural appendage, to which are added some hints on the
grafting of tails with artificial scions, by a retired farrier in ill
health."

During the last year of his life, Mr. Potts offered a prize of five
thousand dollars for the discovery of a harmless and indelible white
paint, to be used in changing the complexion of the colored
population, to place them on an equality with ourselves, or for any
chemical process which would produce the same result.

Mr. Potts proposed to substitute for capital punishment, houses of
seclusion for murderers, where, remote from the world, in rural
retreats, they might converse with nature, and in the cultivation of
the earth, or the pursuit of botany, might become gradually softened
and humanized. At the expiration of a few months' probation, he
proposed to restore them to society.

A criminal is an erring brother. The object of punishment is