need no comment,--and most people conceive it to be so; but the term
"sound" really admits of as much contrariety of opinion as the word
"tipsy;" one man considers another so if, at ten at night, he is not
precisely as cool and collected as he was at one in the day. Another one
calls a man so when he lies on the floor and holds himself on by the
carpet. So,--as to soundness, some persons can not see that a horse is
unsound, unless he works his flanks like the drone of a bagpipe, or
blows and roars like a blacksmith's bellows; while some are so
fastidious as to consider a horse as next to valueless because he may
have a corn that he never feels, or a thrush for which he is not, nor
likely to be, one dollar the worse.

So far as relates to such hypercritical deciders on soundness, we will
venture to say that, if they brought us twenty reported horses in
succession, we would find something in all of those produced that would
induce such persons to reject them, though, perhaps, not one among the
lot had anything about him of material consequence. To say the least, we
will venture to assert that nine-tenths of the horses now in daily use
are more or less unsound. We make no reservation as to the description
of horse, his occupation, or what he may be worth. We scarcely ever had,
indeed scarcely ever knew, a horse that had been used, and tried
sufficiently to prove him a good one, that was in every particular
unequivocally sound. We have no doubt that there are thousands of owners
of horses who will at once say we are wrong in this assertion, and would
be ready to produce their own horses as undeniable proofs, whereby to
back their opinion and refute ours. They may, perhaps, say that their
horses are never lame--perhaps not; that is, not lame in their
estimation or to their eye; but we daily see horses that go to a certain
degree indubitably lame, while their owners conceive them to be as
indubitably sound. These horses, perhaps, all do their work perfectly