196 HOESE POETEAITUEE. 



at full speed, lie makes a fine appearance, carrying his 

 head high, and going in grand style every way. 



PKECEPTOK. I perceive you are afraid I will get a poor 

 opinion of the horse, with his queer name. You promised 

 me the reason for thus calling him, and I have had it on 

 the tip of my tongue to ask you to gratify my curiosity. 

 You need not fear, however, that I will condemn him 

 without a fair trial. I do not look for first-class trotters 

 to be necessarily of the same excellence on the road. 

 Many of the best are not pleasant to drive there, most 

 of them for want of practice, and others from being badly 

 driven. 



PUPIL. When you finish your description of your recent 

 trip, I will recount why this fellow was called Never Mind. 

 Before he is hitched to the wagon, I must acquaint you with 

 another bad trick he has, though luckily he has not had 

 frequent opportunity to practice it. When harnessed, if 

 not allowed to start right off, he will rush back at a tre- 

 mendous gait, and it is astonishing how fast he can per- 

 form this crawfish movement. If the wagon or sulky hits 

 anything, he is sure to break it or the harness. When I 

 had him at home, the inside of the track was planted in 

 corn. At the time I speak of, it was just high enough to 

 commence tasseling, say six or seven feet. In making his 

 retrograde rush, he backed the sulky into the corn. The 

 slight resistance led him to think he could break it, and 

 back he threw his whole weight in the breeching. Hear- 

 ing nothing but the crushing of the corn, and not the 

 crash he expected, he kept backing at a "right lively gait" 

 and never stopped till the entire field was traversed, nearly 

 three hundred yards. As the sulky struck the back-stretch- 

 and there was no longer any resistance from the standing 

 corn, he was "fairly nonplussed; and stopping a moment, as 

 if cogitating on the probable reason why the sulky was 

 not broken, he swung round, and jogged off as if nothing 



