at one time or another, experienced in nightmares, the agony of attempting to fly
from some pursuing phantom, when our limbs refuse to serve us. This, I fancy, is
much what a fox suffers, only his pains are intensified by the grimness of stern
reality. If he stops, he loses his life, therefore he rolls, and flounders, and creeps
along when every movement has become a fresh torture. The cock, quail, dove,
bull, ram, or fish, on the other hand, fights because it is his nature to do so, and
when he has had his fill he stops. His pluck, his pride, and his hatred of defeat
alone urge him to continue the contest. He is never driven by the relentless whip
of stern inexorable necessity. This it is which makes fights between animals, that
are properly conducted, less cruel than one is apt to imagine.
The necessity that knows no law, is the only real slave driver, as the sojourner in
Eastern exile knows full well. No fetters ever gall so much, as the knowledge
that the chain is made fast at the other end.