CHAPTER V 



HAND 



WHAT is it? Intellect, nerve, sympathy, 

 confidence, skill ? None of these can be 

 said to constitute this quality ; rather it is a 

 combination of all, with something superinduced 

 that can only be called a magnetic affinity between 

 the aggressive spirit of man and the ductile nature 

 of the beast. 



" He spurred the old horse, and he held him tight, 

 And leaped him out over the wall," 



says Kingsley, in his stirring ballad of " The 

 Knight's Last Leap at Alten-ahr " ; and Kingsley, 

 an excellent rider himself, thus described exactly 

 how the animal should have been put at its 

 formidable fence. Most poets would have let 

 their horse's head go — the loose rein is a favourite 

 method of making play in literature — and a fatal 

 refusal must have been the result. The German 

 Knight, however, whose past life seems to have 

 been no less disreputable than his end was tragic, 

 had not 



" Lived by the saddle for years a score," 

 68 



