The Albany Register

Unprecedented Case of Cruelty.

We have had numerous instances of lasting revenge and persecution between man and man, but we have rarely seen that disposition exhibited for many years in the most cruel and persistent way on the part of a man toward a dumb beast. Such a case has transpired in Fulton county, Ill. A wealthy farmer (we give his name because such a man deserves to be made famous) named Coleman had a colt which kicked or bit or in some other way displeased him. He conceived a fierce dislike to the animal thereupon, and invented a fiendish system of revenge. He had a small covered pen built and placed the animal in it, never to come out alive. He fed and watered it bountifully and watched the result. For a year or more the horse showed no signs of suffering from his confinement, its hair began to grow thin and fall off, then it became misshapen, and legs crooked. Its front hoofs grew eighteen inches long and turned up so that they touched his shins. Such a spectacle did the horse become that a circus proprietor seeing it, offered $1,500 for it as a curiosity, but was refused. Vengeance against the animal was sweeter than the money. After ten years of confinement the horse died. Thus Coleman was suffered by his neighbors to do this thing uninterfered with, and it is said they thought him a pretty good sort of a man, but the Illinois Humane Society think differently and have arrested him. He makes no defense and will be brought to trial, so that he stands a fair show for punishment. It ought to be adequate. As a peculiar phase of human nature, this circumstance can hardly be excelled.-Milwaukee Sentinel.