a great spray on either flank,
and, her head curved to its proudest arch, pace around me with that
high action and springing step peculiar to the thoroughbred. Then like
a flash, dropping her brush and laying back her ears and stretching
her nose straight out, she would speed away with that quick, nervous,
low-lying action which marks the rush of racers, when side by side and
nose to nose lapping each other, with the roar of cheers on either hand
and along the seats above them, they come straining up the home stretch.
Returning from one of these arrowy flights, she would come curvetting
back, now pacing side-wise as on parade, now dashing her hind feet high
into the air, and anon vaulting up and springing through the air, with
legs well under her, as if in the act of taking a five-barred gate, and
finally would approach and stand happy in her reward--my caress.

"The war, at last, was over. Gulnare and I were in at the death with
Sheridan at the Five Forks. Together we had shared the pageant at
Richmond and Washington, and never had I seen her in better spirits than
on that day at the capital. It was a sight indeed to see her as she came
down Pennsylvania Avenue. If the triumphant procession had been all
in her honor and mine, she could not have moved with greater grace and
pride. With dilating eye and tremulous ear, ceaselessly champing her
bit, her heated blood bringing out the magnificent lacework of veins
over her entire body, now and then pausing, and with a snort gathering
herself back upon her haunches as for a mighty leap, while she shook
the froth from her bits, she moved with a high, prancing step down the
magnificent street, the admired of all beholders. Cheer after cheer was
given, huzza after huzza rang out over her head from roofs and balcony,
bouquet after bouquet was launched by fair and enthusiastic admirers
before her; and yet, amid the crash and swell of music, the cheering and
tumult, so gentle and manageable was she, that, though I could feel her
frame creep and tremble under me as she moved through that whirlwind of
excitement, no check or curb was needed, and the bridle-lines--the same
she wore when she came to me at Malvern Hill--lay unlifted on the pommel
of the saddle. Never before had I seen her so grandly herself. Never
before had the fire and energy, the grace and gentleness, of her blood
so revealed themselves. This was the day and the event she needed. And
all the royalty of her ancestral