OUR REPRESENTATIVE :vL\N. 261 



Another day I selected a brilliant-looking affair. Black 

 turned up with blue and blue turned up with black, silver- 

 plated harness, a horse of a peculiar colour, not unlike that 

 of the variegated granite rocks on the Jersey coast — an ex- 

 cellent notion, by the way, for material for the animal in an 

 equestrian statue— and reminding me forcibly of the sand in 

 one of those glass mementos, bell-shaped, of the Isle of 

 V/ight called a " Trifle from Shanklin,'' and meant, if used 

 properly, for a paper weight. Would you gather from this 

 that it was a sort of roan ? I believe it was. Somebody to 

 v/hom I described this said, " Oh ! that was a Strawberry 

 Dun." It might have been, but it seemed to me what a 

 strawberry might look like under a sharp attack of measles. 

 He was stepping along, as proud as a peacock, when I hired 

 him. 



From the moment I got in, bum.ping my hat as usual, the 

 Strawberr}' Dun showed what a trained humbug of a steed 

 he was. His air>- manners forsook him completely ; he 

 jogged along at a slow pace, until I began to think that 

 '• I really would speak to the driver" — when all of a sudden 

 he plucked up as we were crossing a thoroughfare, and in 

 glorious style charged another Hansom which was driving 

 out of a street at right angles to us. How a collision, in 

 which the horse would have been the principal sufferer, was 

 avoided, I do not know, but avoided it was, and he went on 

 in his old butter-and-egg fashion, until a nasty corner offered 

 him a chance of displaying his original genius. He was 

 going round this as though he were practically discovering 

 some new force in nature, when his knees failed him, and, 



