He went
about sorrowing for the pain and disappointment he had inflicted on many
amiable people of all degrees who had tried to supply him with a horse.

"Look here," said his neighbor, finding him in this low state, "why
don't you get a horse of the gentleman who furnishes mine?" This had
been suggested before, and my friend explained that he had disliked to
make trouble. His scruples were lightly set aside, and he suffered
himself to be entreated. The fact was he was so discouraged with his
attempt to buy a horse that if any one had now given him such a horse as
he wanted he would have taken it.

One sunny, breezy morning his neighbor drove my friend over to the
beautiful farm of the good genius on whose kindly offices he had now
fixed his languid hopes. I need not say what the landscape was in
mid-August, or how, as they drew near the farm, the air was enriched
with the breath of vast orchards of early apples,--apples that no forced
fingers rude shatter from their stems, but that ripen and mellow
untouched, till they drop into the straw with which the orchard aisles
are bedded; it is the poetry of horticulture; it is Art practicing the
wise and gracious patience of Nature, and offering to the Market a
Summer Sweeting of the Hesperides.

The possessor of this luscious realm at once took my friend's case into
consideration; he listened, the owner of a hundred horses, with gentle
indulgence to the shapeless desires of a man whose wildest dream was
_one_ horse. At the end he said, "I see you want a horse that can take
care of himself."

"No," replied my friend, with the inspiration of despair. "I want a
horse that can take care of me."

The good genius laughed, and turned the conversation. Neither he nor my
friend's neighbor was a man of many words, and like taciturn people they
talked in low tones. The three moved about the room and looked at the
Hispano-Roman pictures; they had a glass of sherry; from time to time
something was casually murmured about Frank. My friend felt that he was
in good hands, and left the affair to them. It ended in a visit to the
stable, where it appeared that this gentleman had no horse to sell among
his hundred which exactly met my friend's want, but that he proposed to
lend him Frank while a certain other animal was put in training for the
difficult office he required of a horse. One of the men was sent for
Frank, and in the mean time my friend was shown some gaunt and graceful
thorou