SEAT. 99 



particular, but for the pivot on which it turned, a shaft 

 entering the belly below its girths, and communicating 

 through the floor with the machinery that set in motion 

 and regulated its astonishing vagaries. On mounting, 

 the illusion was complete. Its very neck was so con- 

 structed with hinges that, on pulling at the bridle, it 

 gave you its head without changing the direction of its 

 body, exactly like an unbroken colt as yet intractable 

 to the bit. At a word from the inventor, spoken in 

 his own language to his assistants below, this artificial 

 charger committed every kind of wickedness that could 

 be devised by a fiend in equine shape. It reared 

 straight on end ; it lunged forward with its nose be- 

 tween its fore-feet, and its tail elevated to a perpen- 

 dicular, awkward and ungainly as that of a swan in 

 reverse. It lay down on its side ; it rose to its legs 

 with a bounce, and finally, if the rider's strength and 

 dexterity enabled him still to remain in the saddle, it 

 wheeled round and round with a velocity that could 

 not fail at last to shoot him out of his seat on to the 

 floor, humanely spread with mattresses, in anticipation 

 of this inevitable catastrophe. It is needless to say how 

 such an exhibition drew, with so horse-loving a public 

 as our own. No gentleman who fancied he could " ride 

 a bit " was satisfied till he had taken his shilling's worth 



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