WHIP AND SPUR
BY
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMIV
COPYRIGHT, 1897
BY DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO.
CONTENTS.
| Page | |
| Vix | 7 |
| Ruby | 34 |
| Wettstein | 67 |
| Campaigning with Max | 93 |
| How I got my Overcoat | 138 |
| Two Scouts | 162 |
| In the Gloaming | 186 |
| Fox-Hunting in England | 201 |
VIX.
When the work on the Central Park hadfairly commenced, in the spring of 1858,I found—or I fancied—that properattention to my scattered duties made it necessarythat I should have a saddle-horse.
How easily, by the way, the arguments thatconvince us of these pleasant necessities findtheir way to the understanding!
Yet, how to subsist a horse after buying one,and how to buy? The memory of a well-bredand keen-eyed gray, dating back to the earliestdays of my boyhood, and forming the chief featureof my recollection of play-time for years;an idle propensity, not a whit dulled yet, tolinger over Leech’s long-necked hunters, andHerring’s field scenes; an almost superstitiousfaith in the different analyses of the bones ofthe racer and of the cart-horse; a firm beliefin Frank Forester’s teachings of the value of“blood,”—all these conspired to narrow myrange of selection, and, unfortunately, to confineit to a very expensive class of horses.
Unfortunately, again, the commissioners of thePark had extremely inconvenient ideas of economy,and evidently did not consider, in fixingtheir schedule of salaries, how much more satisfactoryour positions would have been with moregenerous emolument.
How a man with only a Park salary, and witha family to support, could set up a saddle-horse,—andnot ride to the dogs,—was a question thatexercised not a little of my engineering tale