Hoof it

I remember a story:

Richelieu was a great warrior gentleman that brought several hundred young men to America to support the Revolution. He was a loud energetic man with a creed he spoke day upon day. I visited the barracks in Newport RI where he had met each night with his little Army – still a true threat to the English nearby. He would talk hours each night to his young charges, his regalia and his stallion always with him in the great barn. My guide, a Rhode Island judge, pointed earnestly to a yard-wide medallion next to the pedestal where Richelieu spoke each night. The General’s bold white stallion had hoofed a 4 inch deep circle into the old oak planks because night after night, waiting and waiting, the stallion’s impatience circled a bowl into the hard wood floor as if to commemorate that these are the arguments and speeches and agonies and fears that make nations the horse did say.