IFOREST AND STREAM. 



69 



GENERAL GRANT AND HTS FOUR-IN- 

 HAND. 



AT Long Branch, in the season, there is often to he wit- 

 nessed a very fine display of " turnouts " upon what 

 is known as the Ocean avenue. ' It is a source of pleas- 

 ure to see the women in their little dog-carts, and faiKy 

 calashes, handling the reins ; they are so earnest and so 

 full of enjoyment. The men do not always please us ; they 

 too frequently appear nervous in their seats ; there is also a 

 lack of responsive mental sympathy playing along the 

 reins, hetween the horses and their master. A high-spirit- 

 ed horse and a hrave, dashing woman understand each 

 other on sight ; but a man must show his common-sense 

 and magnanimity to a horse, before he can command his 

 sympathy. To manage a spirited team well, the members 

 of it should be intimately acquainted with the driver, not 

 only bear his society — for they cannot help that — but they 

 must entertain for him a solid respect. 



The equine show at the Branch came to an end with the 

 disappearance of the sun ; the butterflies left the moment 

 the cool sea air chilled their wings. Only the solid estab- 

 lishments remained to the last. When we were turning 

 away, the unexpected sight of a " four-in-hand" came 

 down the road, moving silently in the twilight, as if from 

 the spirit land. The heavy vehicle was almost quaint in 

 its fashion, the horses were in fine condition, but evidently 

 aged, and in form and color they did not match; but they 

 moved together with the precision of a perfect piece of ma- 

 chinery. On the seat was a gentleman of most modest ap- 

 pearance, so immovable that, but for the wreath of the fra- 

 grant Havana which come from his firmly set mouth, he 

 might have been of stone. But the reins he held seemed 

 to be the heart-strings of the noble animals which, with such 

 dignified action, sped on their way. In another instant 

 the vehicle, the fluttering of a costly shawl, together with 

 horses and driver, were lost in the gathering darkness down 

 the road. Presently this four-in-hand returned, the horses 

 more spirited — they were now homeward bound. That 

 unpretentious turnout, those well cared for and obedient 

 horses, that firm hand, that silent movement, that delicate 

 wreathing cloud of smoke, could represent the personal pe- 

 culiarities and surroundings, as the reader must anticipate, 

 of no other person than General Grant. 



In common with our fellow-countrymen at large, we had 

 heard of General Grant's fondness for horses. Close as he 

 keeps his mouth, and as reticent as he is regarding his likes 

 and dislikes, he has betrayed himself as an ardent lover 

 of horse-flesh. Here we have at least one opening into his 

 heart, through which to study his real nature. We never 

 heard it to be else than noble to admire the horse ; it's a 

 royal failing, it's a manly weakness. General Grant may in 

 charity, therefore, be pardoned for his foible, it has been in 

 such good company through all times ; but as a Republican 

 Chief -Magistrate, he should, we thought, not affect extrav- 

 agance in keeping up a stud, nor waste money on equipages 

 which, from costliness, are offensive to public taste, and an 

 outrage upon the simplicity of our political institutions ! 



General Grant was brought up in the country, where it 

 was convenient and useful to be always riding. At West 

 Point, as a cadet, without any pretention, he was, for all 

 practical purposes, the best rider in the school. This was, 

 in his case, a most fortunate predilection, for as com- 

 mander of our armies, he was always in ilie field. While other 

 officers used ambulances to relieve themselves of the se- 

 verity of constant horseback exercise, General Grant per- 

 tinaciously stuck to his saddle. From Petersburgh to Appo- 

 matox Court-house, his "official residence" was only the 

 "fly" of a common tent. His table was literally " soldiers' 

 fare;" one substantial dish was only demanded ; even with 

 this simple food he ate sparingly ; no stimulants were ever 

 used. There was one time when not one of his generals or 

 subordinate officers on his staff had any liquor for an entire 

 year and two months. He never used it himself nor offered 

 it to others. 



Passionately fond of riding, and with the physical ability 

 to perform it, for he possesses an iron constitution, as well 

 as an iron will, he was enabled to personally inspect his mil- 

 itary lines. While engaged in this important duty, he 

 often rode from forty to fifty miles a day. In the excite- 

 ment of the hour he frequently left his staff in the rear, 

 and his whereabouts to its members, after hours of solici- 

 tude, was made known by discharges of shot and shell 

 from the observing enemy. To accomplish this herculean 

 labor, he took a horse in the morning, sending forward the 

 reliefs with the " head-quarters," so that when he " tired 

 out " one animal another was at hand ; for himself he had 

 no relief, and apparently never needed one. 



He made it his practice while in the field, to personally 

 look after his horses, while in care of the groom, and 

 he keeps up this humane practice ( which Mr. Bergh should 

 notice ) since he has been President. He has no recreation 

 which he thoroughly enjoys, except riding or driving ; if 

 not thus engaged he is hard at work. 



Soon after the fall of Vicksburg certain citizens of Indi- 

 ana determined to present General Grant a horse. A sub- 

 scription was at once set on foot, the highest amount given 

 toward the object, by one person, was limited to one dol- 

 lar. The committee entrusted with the purchase heard 

 that there was a very fine animal for sale at a fair in Ken- 

 tucky,- that land of fine stock, and made an especial trip to 

 purchase, if the horse answered the demand. The " phe- 

 nomenon " turned out to be lame, and wholly unservice- 

 able. By a happy accident, a horse, quite modestly exhib- 

 ited under the name of "Egypt," was noticed, approved of 

 by the committee, purchased, and presented to the General. 



This horse, and Cincinnati, " a full-blooded Lexington," 

 also a gift from friends, General Grant took with him from 

 the fall of Vicksburg, and they were active participants in 

 every subsequent engagement. 



The Jeff. Davis mare, as she is called, picked up on the 

 banks of the Mississippi, being first-rate under the saddle, 

 did a great deal of hard work. General Grant was riding 

 this generous creature outside the Union lines, when Gen- 

 eral Lee sent his message, expressing a desire for a meeting, 

 on Sunday morning, the memorable 9th of April. When 

 Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to the "head-quarters" of the 

 army, he selected Cincinnati for his steed. 



These three horses of historic importance, except two 

 others, are all General Grant has possessed since his advent 

 as General and Chief-Magistrate. All were presented to 

 him by friends while holding the place of a Commanding 

 General. When he drives " four-in-hand " his "drag "is 

 the heavy wagon we have alluded to, which ' ' he owned 

 before the war." Egypt and Cincinnati, both seventeen 

 or eighteen years old, are in the lead. Such is the " im- 

 perial carriage " and such the "costly stud," about which 

 so much is written, and published in the columns of the 

 "Argus-eyed press." 



Soldiers are passionately fond of their war horses. Wel- 

 lington, for years kept the one he rode at Waterloo under 

 his personal care, and when it died he erected a tablet over 

 its burying-place. General'Taylor treated " Old Whitey " 

 as a companion and friend. What is General Grant to do 

 with Egypt and Cincinnati else than nurse them to their 

 end ? and what better horses can he have in the lead than 

 these equine veterans, who, through their long career of 

 military service, were trained to keep the front ? 



Col. T. B. Thorpe. 



§lm L S&frmitfs. 



A PLEA FOR PEDESTRIANS. 



THE human body is a steed that goes freest and long- 

 est under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders 

 is a cheerful heart. Your sad, or morose, or embittered, or 

 pre-occupied heart settles heavily into the saddle, and the 

 poor beast, the body, breaks down the first mil<3. Indeed, 

 the heaviest thing in the world is a heavy heart. Next to 

 that, the most burdensome to the walker' is a heart not in 

 sympathy and accord with the body. The horse and rider 

 must both be willing to go the same way. This is no doubt 

 our trouble, and the main reason of the decay of the noble 

 art in this country. As a people we are not so 'positively 

 sad, or taciturn, or misanthropical, as we are vacant of that 

 sportiveness and surplusage of animal spirits that charac- 

 terized our ancestors, and that springs from full and har- 

 monious life — a sound heart in accord with a sound body. 

 A man must invest himself near at hand and in common 

 tilings, and be content with a steady and moderate return, 

 if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart and 

 the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. This is a 

 lesson the American has yet to learn — capability of amuse- 

 ment on a low key. He would make the very elemental 

 laws pay usury. He has nothing to invest in a walk ; it is 

 too slow; too cheap. We crave the astonishing, the excit- 

 ing, the far away, and do not know the highways of the 

 gods when we see them — always a sign of the decay of the 

 faith and simplicity of man. 



If I were to say to my neighbor, "Come, let us go walk 

 amid the heavenly bodies," he would prick up his ears and 

 come forthwith; but if I were to take him out on the hills 

 under the full blaze of the sun, or along the country road, 

 our footsteps lighted by the moon and stars, and say to 

 him, "Behold, these are the heavenly bodies, this we now 

 tread is a morning star," he would feel defrauded, as if I 

 had played him a trick. And yet nothing less than dilata- 

 tion and enthusiasm like this is the badge of the master 

 walker. 



If we are not sad wc are careworn, hurried, discontented, 

 mortgaging the present for the promise of the future. If 

 we take a walk, it is as we take a prescription, with about 

 the same relish and with about the same purpose ; and the 

 more the fatigue the greater our faith in the virtue of the 

 medicine. 



Of those gleesome saunters over the hills in spring, or 

 those sallies of the body in winter, those excursions into 

 space when the foot strikes fire at every step, when the air 

 tastes like a new and finer mixture, when we accumulate 

 force and gladness as we go along, when the sight of ob- 

 jects by the roadside and of the fields and woods pleases 

 more than pictures or than all the art in the world — those 

 ten or twelve mile dashes that are but the wit and effluence 

 of the corporeal powers — of such diversion and open road 

 entertainment, I say most of us know very little. 



I notice with astonishment that at our fashionable water- 

 ing-places nobody walks ; that of all those vast crowds of 

 health-seekers and. lovers of country air, you can never 

 catch one in the fields or woods, or guilty of trudging 

 along the country road with dust on his shoes and sun-tan 

 on his hands and face. The sole amusement seems to be 

 to eat and dress and sit about the hotels and glare at each 

 other. The men look bored, the women look tired, and 

 all seem to sigh, "Oh Lord ! what shall we do to be happy 

 and not be vulgar?" Quite different from our British 

 cousins across the water, who have plenty of amusement 

 and hilarity, spending most of their time at their watering- 

 places in the open air, strolling, pic-nicking, boating, 

 climbing, briskly walking, apparently with little fear of 

 sun-tan or of compromising their "gentility." — u Mvhilira. 

 tion of the Road" by John Burroughs, in Galaxy. 



Dumas Pets. — When Dumas was a young man, he lived 

 with his mother in the Rue de V Ouest, and they had a cat, 

 called Mysouff , which ought to have been a dog. 



Every morning, Dumas left home at half -past nine — it 

 was half an hour's walk from the Rue de l'Ouest to the 

 office in the Rue St. Honore, No. 216 — and every afternoon 

 he returned home at half-past five. Every morning My- 

 souff accompanied his master as far as the Rue de Vaugir- 

 ard ; and every afternoon he went and waited for him at 

 the Rue de Vaugirard. Those were his limits; he never 



went an inch further. As soon as he caught sight of his 

 master, he swept the pavement with his tail; at his nearer 

 approach, he rose on all-fours, with arching back and tail 

 erect. When Dumas set foot in the Rue de l'Ouest, the 

 cat jumped to his knees as a dog would have done; then, 

 turning round every ten paces, he led the way to the house. 

 At twenty paces from the house, he set off at a gallop, and 

 two seconds, afterwards, the expectant mother appeared at 

 the door. 



The most curious circumstance was, that whenever by 

 chance any temptation caused Dumas to neglect his mother's 

 dinner hour, it was useless for her to open the door; Mysouff 

 would not stir from his cushion. But on the day when 

 Dumas was a punctual good boy, if she forgot to open the 

 door, Mysouff scratched it till she let ' him out. Conse- 

 quently, she called Mysouff her barometer; it was Set Fair 

 when Dumas came home to dinner, Rain or Wind w4ien he 

 was absent. — All The Year Round. 



MOSS GATHERING. 



Among the articles of commerce furnished by nature in 

 this semi-tropical climate of ours, says the New Orleans 

 Twies, is moss. This long, luxuriant parasite clothes and 

 festoons the trees, with its dull drapery all over the woods 

 and swamps of lower Louisiana, The same humidity and 

 warmth in the atmosphere which deprives man of the will 

 to work, foster and nourish the growth of this strange 

 plant, and thus affords him, if he would avail himself of 

 the opportunities, an easy way of making a living. The 

 supply of moss in our forests is simply inexhaustible. 

 There are trees loaded down with it standing on thousands 

 of square miles in this State, and even when the tree is 

 denuded of this weird-like garb, in less than a year it comes 

 out in a dress as ample as that of which it had been stripped. 

 The Avaters of all our swamps are filled with it, where it 

 has dropped from the trees, and lies rotting, ungathered, 

 and uncared for. The whole country where this moss 

 grows is accessible to any one desirous of turning it to ac- 

 count. Bayous and streams navigable for large boats inter- 

 sect the woods and swamps where it grows, in every direc- 

 tion. But strange to say, this moss Interest, which might 

 be made so great here, is neglected, although it presents so 

 many inducments to those who are desirous of gaining an 

 honest livelihood. 



Most of them, with that prodigality and wastefulness 

 which are part of the nature of our people, cut the trees 

 down to gather the moss on them, and thus kill the goose 

 which lays the golden eggs, without even eating the goose, 

 for they leave the the jtree to rot where it lies, aftcr'strip- 

 pinf it of its sombre covering. But some of them are more 

 economical, and, having an eye to future wants, more 

 properly climb the trees among the moss, which they gather 

 off the limbs and throw to the ground in a pile. These 

 heaps are left standing for sometime, and the rain, with the 

 dews, thoroughly saturating them, they undergo a species 

 of " sweating," like tobacco, which rots off the gray cover- 

 ing and leaves the black, fibrous horse-hair like material, 

 which is the moss of commerce. This is usually trans- 

 ported to market in flats and boats of the swamps. It is 

 packed up near the place of curing in rude bales with rope 

 ties. When it arrives in New Orleans it passes under the 

 manipulation of moss pickeries and through the machinery 

 of gins, after which it is pressed into bales under steam pres- 

 sure, bound with neat iron ties and is then ready for shipment. 

 The men who gather this moss usually live on the banks 

 and islands of the bayous which lead through the swamps. 

 Most of those at present engaged in it are Germans and 

 Creoles, who live very comfortably on the spots of high 

 land which are found almost everywhere in the swamp 

 country of Louisiana. They prepare their moss in rather a 

 rough manner to be sold advantageously in the New Or- 

 leans market, but' there the "country moss," is nearly al- 

 ways rehandled and refined as it were by the exporters of 

 Louisiana moss. After the necessary preparation is made 

 with the rough material these parties find no difficulty in 

 selling their moss in the northern markets. 



X 



A Whale Killed by a Submarine Cable.— A break in 

 the submarine calbe between Kurrachee and Gwadioer 

 British India, has developed the most surprising and veri- 

 table " fish story " of recent date. On the 4th of July the 

 cable suddenly failed, and the interruption was discovered 

 to be at a point 118 miles from Kurrachee, where the cable 

 passes over a very uneven and rocky bottom, and a steamer 

 with the telegraph repairing staff on board was despatched 

 thither. The cable was grappled at once, but on Avind- 

 ing it in, unusual resistance was experienced, as if it was 

 foul of the rocks. After persevering sometime, the body 

 of an immense whale was brought to the surface, the fish 

 being entangled in the cable, two turns of which passed 

 round its body immediately above the tail. The whale had 

 evidently struggled long and hard to release itself, and 

 dying in. the effort, had become a prey to sharks and other 

 fish, which had devoured a large portion of it. The 

 strain, in course of hauling the "cable, caused it to cut 

 through the monster, and the carcass sunk in deep water 

 The size of the fish may be judged from the fact that its 

 tail measured twelve feet across. It is supposed that the 

 whale had found a festoon of the cable stretching from a 

 submarine precipice, and had been endeavoring to wipe 

 the barnacles from its sides by rubbing against the rope 

 when the tail became entangled. The first part of the op- 

 eration was fully illustrated to those on board the tele- 

 graph ship, for as they lay at anchor a number of whales 

 played around, and rubbed themselves against the hawser 

 by which the vessel was secured. This incident, so sur- 

 prising in every way, shows how liable the means of cable 

 communication are to be cut off any moment by the gam- 

 bols of the monsters of the great deep. 



A Persian Joke.— " One day Hafiz was in the baths at Pa- 

 breez, when he met a stranger, who entered into conver- 

 sation with him, and presently began to ' chaff him on his 

 baldness.' (Now, though Mohammedans shave their 

 heads, they ordinarily leave a small tuft of hair, or fore- 

 lock, in front and, of course, the hair quickly grows aa;ain 

 except where there is natural baldness, as in this case ) 

 The stranger took hold of one of the round tin shaving 

 vessels used in the bath, and holding it out to Hafiz ex- 

 claimed : ' How comes it that all you Shiranzees have the 

 top of your heads like this ?' ' And how happens it ' re- 

 torted Hafiz, turning the bowl with its cavity upwards 

 .' that all you Tabreez.es have the inside of your heads like 

 that ?' " 



