38 THE HORSK. 



compel it against its own will, being hardly known at all, and 

 never used for such purposes in the United States. 



In England, it is invariably the first step, and it is curious 

 to see what power it gives to the young rider, who, having 

 learned his rudiments on the obstinate but long-enduring grizzel, 

 finds himself impregnably seated on a high-spirited pony, which 

 an inexperienced spectator would imagine infinitely the more 

 difiicult to ride, and able to defy all its cabrioles or soubresaults 

 to unseat him. 



A boy who can sit an ass, so that he cannot be kicked over 

 its head, can sit any thing, and is in a fair way to make a first- 

 rate horseman. Hence its extreme fitness for teaching chil- 

 dren ; its form rendering it very difficult to sit, its temper very 

 difficult to control, while, at the same time, its stolid and lazy 

 liabits avert all danger of its doing more than depositing its 

 young rider gently in the dirt, and then falling to graze on the 

 nearest dock leaf or Canada thistle. It never shies, never 

 plunges, and, above all, never runs away. It is, perhaps, at 

 once the least dangerous and most difficult animal to ride in 

 the whole range of the quadruped creation. 



I well remember the fun of a scene, which occurred at some 

 rural merry-makings in the park of a gentleman in Avliose neigh- 

 borhood I was brouglit up ; when donkey races being a pai-t of 

 the programme, half a dozen young men, all of them first-rate 

 performers across country, and able to handle the wildest thor- 

 oughbred, relying on the fact, that they liad all once been 

 donkey-riders themselves, undertook to act o,^ jocks on the occa- 

 sion, to the racing noddies. 



It was all very well at first, but when the tug arrived, and 

 the spur was exhibited at the run-in, up went the heels and 

 down went the heads of all the noddies simultaneously, and away 

 went the gallant jocks, yards over the long ears of their mon- 

 tures, who at once betook themselves to munching the green- 

 sward, much to the amusement of the lady spectators, and to 

 the delight of the ten and twelve year-old urchins — legitimate 

 owners of the noddies, and younger brothers, or cousins, of the 

 discomfited Meltonian jocks — who shortly after, legitimately 

 perched on the croups of the animals, delivered a sweepstakes, 

 which came off with great eclat, among universal cudgelling 



