RECOLLECTIONS OF MEN AND HORSES 



and always, is to treat a horse as if he were an ox* 

 You may be slow if you think proper. But your 

 horse should be kept up to nature. He would have 

 had but two legs if it was meant that he should go 

 only on a ' go-to-meeting ' pace. He has four legs. 

 Of course he ought to do a great deal with them. 



"Now, why do I say these things to you? Not 

 to convince you of your duty. But, I feared lest, 

 taking me out to ride, you would be disposed to 

 think that I had scruples, and would jog along mod- 

 erately, as if doing me a favor. Not at all. The 

 wind does not go fast enough to suit me. If I were 

 engineer of a sixty-mile-an-hour express train, I 

 should covet twenty miles an hour more. 



" Let the horse be well-groomed well-harnessed. 

 Let the wagon be thoroughly looked to no screw 

 loose, no flaws just ready to betray us. Mount. I 

 am by your side. The whip is not needed. Yet 

 let it stand in its place, the graceful hint of authority 

 in reserve, which is always wholesome to men and 

 horses. 



" Now get out of town cautiously. No speed 

 here. This is a place for sobriety, moderation, and 

 propriety in driving. But, once having shaken off 

 the crowd, I give you a look, and disappear instantly 

 in a wild excitement, as if all the trees were crazy 

 and had started off in a race, as if the fences were 

 chalk lines, as if the earth and skies were commin- 

 gled, and everything were wildly mixed in a super- 

 natural excitement, neither of earth nor of the skies ! 

 The wind has risen since we started. It did not 

 blow at this rate, surely! These tears are not of 

 sorrow. But really this going like a rocket is new 

 to every sense. Do not laugh if I clutch the seat 

 more firmly. I am not afraid. It is only excitement. 



172 



