tacklin' it meself, I was that
disgusted. I never was a advocate for this _great_ ridin' that racks
people's insides out an' cripples them, there ain't a bit of necessity
for it, but there is reason in everythink, an' they're goin' to the
other extreme, and will have to be carried about on feather-beds in a
ambulance soon if they keep on as they are. There's nothink as good as
it was in the old days. As for a woman ridin' here, all the town would
go out to gape like as she was somethink in the travellin' show
business. I used to ride w'en I come down here first,--that was
sixteen year ago,--but every one asked me such questions, an' looked
at me like a Punch an' Judy show, that I got sick of it. I rode into
Trashe's at the store there one day, an' w'en I was comin' out he
says, 'Will you have a chair to get on?' an' as he didn't seem to be
man enough to sling me on, I said I supposed so. He goes for one of
them tallest chairs--it would be as easy to get on the horse as
it--an' I sez, 'Thanks, I'm not ridin' a elephant, one of them little
chairs would do.' But even that didn't seem to content him; he put it
high on the pavement an' put the horse in the gutter. Then, instead of
puttin' the reins over the horse's head proper, he left them on the
hook, an' with both hands an' all his might holds the beast short by
them in front of its jaw, like as it was the wildest bull from the
Bogongs. The idiot! Supposin' the beast was flash an' pulled away from
him, where would I be without the reins? That about finished me, I was
sick of it, as I could not have believed any man, even out of a
asylum, could be so simple about puttin' a person on a horse."

For this kind of exercise there seemed no promising outlet, and I was
put to it to think of some other. As grandma said, with few
exceptions, the only horses in the district were draughts and ponies.
Every effect has a cause, and the reason of this was that these big
horses were the only ones properly adapted to agriculture, and the
smallness of the holdings did not admit of hacks being kept for mere
pleasure, so the cheapest knockabout horse to maintain was a pony, as
not only did it take less fodder and serve for the little saddle use
of this place, but tethered to a sulky, took the wives and children
abroad. It was the land of sulkies,--made in all sizes to fit the pony
that had to draw them, and of quality in accordance with the purse
that paid for them,--and a pair of horses and