SOME CUEIOUS HOESES 



BY CAPTAIN R. BIRD THOMPSON 



I fancy that I must have possessed as curious a 

 lot of horses as has fallen to the lot of most men 

 — occasioned partly by the fact that friends who, 

 whenever they had a particularly queer-tempered 

 or vicious brute, were in the habit of either present- 

 ing it to me as a gift, or offering it for a mere song ; 

 partly through my having bought several with 

 peculiar reputations ; and, lastly, I think that it 

 must have been predestined that I was to be the 

 owner of these sort of animals. My first pony, 

 which my father bought for me when I was six 

 years old, was purchased from a gentleman who 

 parted with it because it always ran away with his 

 children and kicked them off. The pony, however, 

 never did this with me, although playing the same 

 trick with almost everyone else. One thing, I 

 petted it very much, and it really was fond of 

 me. 



It was a wonderful pony. What its age was I 



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