learned a good bit about horses since then--have hired, borrowed,
and bought them--have been to circuses and horse shows, but never since
have I seen a horse of such appalling aspect. His eyes were the size of
soup-plates, large clouds of smoke came from his nostrils. He had a
glass-enamelled surface, and if he was one half as tall as he felt, some
museum manager missed a fortune. Then the young fiends, leaving me on my
slippery perch, high up near the sky, drew afar off and stood over
against the fence and gave me plenty of room--to fall off. But when I
suddenly felt the world heave up beneath me, I uttered a wild
shriek--clenched my hands in the animal's back hair, and, madly flinging
propriety to any point of the compass that happened to be behind me, I
cast one pantalet over the enamelled back, and thus astride, safely
crossed the pasture--and lo! it was not I who fell, but their faces
instead. When they came to take me down, somehow the animal seemed
shrunken and I hesitated about leaving it, whereupon the biggest boy said
I had "pluck" (I had been frightened nearly to death, but I always could
be silent at the proper moment; I was silent then), and he would teach me
to ride sideways, for my mother would surely punish me if I sat astride
like that; and in a few weeks, thanks to him, I was the one who was
oftenest trusted to take the horses to water at noon, riding sideways and
always bare-back, mounted on one horse and leading a second to the creek,
until all had had their drink. Which habit of riding--from balance--has
made me quite independent of stirrups on various occasions since those
far-away days.

In the late autumn, these same children taught me where and when and how
to find such treasures of the woods as hickory-nuts, chestnuts (rare
there), butternuts, and pecan-nuts, while the thickets furnished
hazel-nuts and the frost brought sweetness to the persimmon, and
consequently pleasure to our palates, but never could I acquire a taste
for the "paw-paw," that inane custard-like fruit, often called the
American banana.

I helped obtain the roots and barks and nut-shells from which the
grown-ups made their dyes. I learned to use a bow and arrow; and on rainy
days, having nothing new to read, I learned by heart the best chapters of
my own birthday books, and often repeated them to the other children when
we cuddled in the hayloft, above the horses.

One day I became too realistic, and in my "flight from my st