138 OCCASIONAL HAPPY THOUGHTS. 



for a horse to be a good walker. When I get accustomed 

 to him I can trot, or canter. 



We descend the hill. His springiness is very objection- 

 able in descending a hill. His hind quarters always seem 

 to be about to double themselves up underneath me. After 

 a time, as nothing of this sort happens, I find that he really 

 is walking down the hill beautifully. It is a long hill, and 

 v.e have done half of it. I begin to like him. He hasn't 

 shied again. I can sit loungine^lv, and admire the view. 



He has shied again. 



I don't know what at. Nothing that I could see. Being 

 unprepared I checked him suddenly, and this had the effect 

 of making his hind legs slide underneath him, as if he were 

 going to fold them up. Being further unprepared for this 

 double effect, my left leg suddenly shoots up in the air, in 

 the direction of the horse's left ear, and the horse, taking 

 this perhaps as some hint from me to get on faster, begins 

 to trot. In a second I am nowhere, I am anywhere ; I see 

 a leg up in the air (which I recognise as belonging to me, 

 though not as being under my control) ; I am conscious of 

 another in the stirrup on the right side, and, as there ought 

 to be another on the left, I feel as though I were, for the 

 moment, constructed so as to exemplify, pracncally, the 

 Manx coat-of-arms, with three legs all going round at once. 

 I am doing " three wheels a' a'p'ny " on horseback. I think 

 I am on my head — no — my left foot is laying hold of my 

 arm, or my arm of my left foot— both together have grappled 



