viii AUTHOR'S APOLOGY 



ing that has not been thought before, and we can only 

 try to think it again." Who was it that said, "To say 

 a thing that everybody else has said before, as quietly 

 as if nobody had ever said it — that is originality." And 

 I fear that that is the only kind of originality I shall 

 lay claim to. 



If by expressing simply and clearly facts well known 

 to experienced horsemen, I can inspire the novice — 

 and particularly those of my own sex — to attain a 

 greater degree of proficiency; if I can create in natures, 

 in which it now lies dormant, a love of horse and hound, 

 of sport and of God's great out-of-doors, I shall feel 

 myself amply repaid. After all, as Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes tells us, it is true that "The best of a book is 

 not in the thought it contains, but the thought it sug- 

 gests, just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones 

 but in the echoes of our own hearts." 



"Covert-Side Farm," 



East Norwich, Long Island, 

 August, 1921. 



