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EEEE LA1ICE EECEIVED HIS JUST DESERTS. The tragedy of Free Iaaaee*a death ns a result of PJta battle wttb Bakah at the ■aataterd Manor bread-lag farm in JefltTsoii comity Monday, will go un-niourned in the horse iiarlance. says the louisviile Courier-Journal. Ninety-nine out of every HM horse-in.-a will say that Free Lance received his just deserts. Haughty, overbearing and. perhaps, jealous, the older, more powerful and imperial stallion, scoffing at discipline, broke down his own barriers, and ■with what appear. d to be a deal case of malice, invaded the domicile of the unoffending Ralph by fort..__ housebreaking in effect — and attacked bis own colleague without cause in bis own stall. In committing this depredation. Free Lance, a Latonia 1. ray winner, passed old Alvescot. hi.s sire, in the open lot, unnoticed, and attacked his distant Arabian relative unawares, and hud the unoffending Ralph fallen a victim, the crime would have been irreparable. But with the primitive instinct of tatf-defeaae, the younger horse defended Ins castle and bis life, and, David-like, slew the giant. The death of Free Lance was a tragedy; the death of Ralph would have been a crime. This fa. not the first, nor yet will it be the last episode in which stallions have met in a duel to the death. Their grudges are as old as those of gladiator*. Few encounters have there ever been between the "ttaed" that they were not to the death. The fury of wild beasts cannot be likened •auto the fury of highly -bred stallions. In the velvet escarpments of the forest, here and there, may be seen the hoofs and horns of buck deer, the horns interlocking in deaths embrace, showing the savagery of the attack in the deep woodlands, while the bright-eyed doe, which ran away, alone survives as the innocent cause of the grapple with death, but no mountain fastness can uveal a secret darker or a duel more desperate than that enacted at Bashford Manor between the thoroughbreds. It is suggested that moving picture enterprises, realizing the film of tragedy they missed in not having a camera on the scene of the Free Lance -Ralph duel, have conceived the idea of putting on a battle between two stallions for the camera in order to capitalize the desperate savagery of the aroused thoroughbred. Such a thought is repulsive, and should not ho permitted in any laud. Every lover of the horse would view such an enterprise with horror.
