312 . Among Men and Horses. 



the same fence, holds good only when the act of leaping 

 is connected in his mind with pain, as, for instance, when 

 he has infirm forelegs, or when his mouth gets pulled about 

 by an incompetent rider. In less than a month, I made 

 Gustave so clever that he used to easily jump, on the heavy 

 tan of the riding-school, a bar 5 feet high with my wife on 

 his back ; and he did not hesitate to do this when the ob- 

 stacle had no wings and was only 10 feet long. I also 

 taught him within this period to strike off from the halt 

 into any required pace (walk, trot, canter or gallop), or to 

 change his pace into any desired one, or to halt by the mere 

 application of the leg and slight movement of the body, 

 while the reins were loose on his neck, and while I kept my 

 hands in my coat-pockets. He would do this in the open, 

 as well as in the riding-school. I may state that Gustave 

 had never received any high school training. 



A few days after our return to London, we met Professor 

 Sample in the street, looking very thin and dejected. We 

 took him back with us to lunch, told him how we had got 

 on in South Africa, and listened to his story. We were 

 sorry to hear that he had continued in a vein of bad luck 

 ever since he had shown his machine in London. His 

 affairs were then in a desperate condition, and to crown 

 all his misfortunes, his beloved machine was in pawn for 

 debt. He believed firmer than ever in the glorious future 

 that was in store for this child of his brain, if he could only 

 get a chance of bringing it before the public. His one 

 concern for the plight in which he then was, was its influence 

 on the success of his invention. I honoured him for the 

 steadfastness of his faith in the thing that had ruined him, 

 and won his heart for the time being by telling him that the 

 fact of the public not having accepted the machine in no 

 way altered my good opinion of it. He implored me to 

 help him in giving it another chance, and I need hardly 

 say that I promised to aid him. I took lodgings for him 

 near where I was staying, and told him that he would always 



