In the Off-Sea son 291 



pedigree as long as its own tail. It never 

 seemed to dawn upon my benighted under- 

 standing that a little elementary jumping prac- 

 tice might not be entirely thrown away on the 

 brutes. No, I would buy one of these three- 

 or four-year-old " spectres " one day and hunt 

 it the next. The number of falls they gave 

 me was simply extraordinary ; but then at 

 twenty one never gets hurt, somehow, and 

 most assuredly I never seemed to learn wisdom 

 from my frequent acquaintance with Mother 

 Earth. No sooner had one of the " rips" got 

 some idea of jumping a country into its head 

 than it would probably be sold to make room 

 for " another of the same," which had caught 

 my fancy, perhaps, at some race-meeting, and 

 then the tumbling-about process would all 

 begin asjain de novo. Most of the brutes 

 whose prices came within my modest means 

 had ewe-necks and no shoulders ; they were 

 almost without exception hard pullers, and 

 yet wouldn't face a curl^-bridle. All this made 

 the business fairly exciting when galloping 

 down hill, as may well be imagined. 



