102 



sitting on it himself, he played a masterly prelude. 



It was impressive to hear the complicated richness and volume of 

 the sounds he evoked after little Billee's gentle " tink-a-tink." 



And Gecko, cuddling lovingly his violin and closing his upturned 

 eyes, played that simple melody as i + had probably never been played 

 before — such passion, such pathos, such a tone — and they turned it and 

 twisted it and went from one key to another, playing into each others 

 hands, Svengali taking the lead ; and f ugued and canoned and counter- 

 pointed and battle doored and shuttlecocked it. high and low, soft and 

 loud, in minor, in pizzicato and eon sordino — adagio, andante, allegretto 

 scherzo — and exhausted all its possibilities of beauty ; till their suscept- 

 ible audience of three -was all but crazed with delight and wonder ; and 

 the masterful Ben Bolt and his over-tender Alice and his too submissive 

 friend and his old schoolmaster, so kind and so true and his long dead 

 schoolmates and the rustic porch and the mill and the slab of granite so 

 gray, 



"And the dear little nook 

 By the clear running brook" 

 "Were all magnified into a strange, almost holy poetic dignity and 

 splendor quite undreamed of by whoever wrote the words and musie of 

 that unsophisticated little song, which has touched so many simple 

 British hearts that don't know any better — and among them, once, that 

 of the present scribe — long, long ago ! " 



The masters of old have divided the gymnasium and the education 

 of the horse in chapters, in degrees or in periods, beginning with the 

 elements and systematically proceeding to the extent which the natural 

 faculties of the horse, physically or intellectually, would permit. 



In this way they created the school on the ground, the highschool 

 and the school above the ground. 



The high school performances up to date, are frequently distorted 

 by too superficial treatment of the schools and evolutions -which go to 

 show the practical value of high school riding, and they are on the other 

 hand amended by exhibitions of tricks which may do to, amuse the visi- 

 tors of a country circus but have no relationship with the art of riding. 



The circus should be and frequently is in Europe, a temple conse- 

 crated to the art of riding and horse training in its various branches, but 

 in this country, high school riding in the circus is so far,but a shameful 

 burlesque of the evolutions of which the performers of this particular 

 branch often have not the faintest idea. 



High school riding constitutes the classical part of equestrianism, 

 and is to be held distinctly apart from trick riding. 



No intelligent rider will fail to appreciate its value once he has ar- 

 rived at a stage -where he can understand its purpose. 



w The absence of general recognition of the high school in this country 

 is due to the fact that the representative specimens of that class are 

 horses, trained to perform as tricks the most striking paces and evolu- 

 tions of these schools lacking entirely the fundamental basis of training 

 and thus furnish no proof of any practical advantage of the high school. 



