Jakes and the Lady

Jakes and the Lady

Black Beauty is sold to a baker. Although he has good intentions, the baker pays little attention to the horses, and the other workers overload the animals and push them hard. Beauty now must wear the checkrein while pulling heavy loads. When he struggles, he is whipped.

One day a lady stops the driver, Jakes, and asks him to cease whipping Beauty and release the checkrein. Jakes ridicules the idea but does it to please the lady. Jakes is surprised when Beauty pulls the cart better. The lady says humans have an obligation to be good to animals and tells Jakes "we call them dumb animals ... for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words." Jakes agrees to release the checkrein on hills, but will not promise to stop using it because the other drivers would laugh at him if he did. To this comment the lady answers, "Is it not better ... to lead a good fashion than to follow a bad one?" Impressed by being spoken to like a gentleman, Jakes does in fact loosen Beauty's rein and removes the checkrein when going uphill. Even so, Beauty gets worn down by all the hard work and is sold to a cab owner.

Beauty also comments on another problem for horses: poorly lit stables. The darkness sensitizes horses' eyes to light, causing considerable pain and difficulty seeing when the horses are exposed to daylight. Had Beauty remained there, he says, he might have lost much of his sight—a condition worse than complete blindness.