Читать книгу Patroclus and Penelope: A Chat in the Saddle - Dodge Theodore Ayrault - Страница 9

You see the corner of the lane, Patroclus, while I have been thus musing, and your lively ear and instinctively quickened gait rouse my half-dazed thoughts. Here we are. Shall we take our accustomed canter? You always wait the word, though you are eagerness itself, for you do not yet know when I want you to start, or which foot I may ask you to lead with. Though, indeed, you will sometimes prance a bit, and change step in the alternate graceful bounds of the passage, to invite and urge my choice. The least pressure of one leg, and off you go, leading with the opposite shoulder. And you will keep this foot by the mile, Patroclus, or change at every second step, should I ask you so to do. You need but the slightest monition of my leg, and instantly your other shoulder takes the lead. I see you want to gallop, boy! But not quite yet. You must not forget that you have been taught, as they say in Kentucky, to canter all day long in the shade of an apple tree, if so be it your master wishes. You shall have your gallop anon. But you must never forget that a horse who can only walk or go a twelve-mile trot or hand-gallop, though he may lead the hunt cross-country, is an unmitigated nuisance on the road. Slow and easy gaits are as valuable to the park-hack as long wind and speed to the racer. And although Boston, as yet, boasts no Rotten Row, are not the daily rides through its exquisite environments the equivalent of the canter in that justly celebrated resort, rather than the mere country tramp upon a handy roadster or the ride to cover on a rapid covert-hack? And yet our imitation of our British cousins has approximated less to the pleasure ride than to the cross-country style. Perhaps, in our eagerness to convince ourselves that we have learned all there is worth knowing in the art, we have aped what is confessedly the finest of horseback sports, and forgotten the more moderate fashion of Hyde Park. Let us remember that we can saunter on the road every day, while riding to hounds is for most of us a rarish luxury.