by
marriage. I have one friend who is addicted to this form of punishment
in a violent, not to say a malignant form. He uses for his purpose a
tall and self-willed horse of the Tudor period--a horse with those high
dormer effects and a sloping mansard. This horse must have been raised,
I think, in the knockabout song-and-dance business. Every time he hears
music or thinks he hears it he stops and vamps with his feet. When
he does this my friend bends forward and clutches him round the neck
tightly. I think he is trying to whisper in the horse's ear and beg him
in Heaven's name to forbear; but what he looks like is Santa Claus with
a clean shave, sitting on the combing of a very steep house with his
feet hanging over the eaves, peeking down the chimney to see if the
children are asleep yet. When that horse dies he will still have finger
marks on his throat and the authorities will suspect foul play probably.

Once I tried it myself. I was induced to scale the heights of a horse
that was built somewhat along the general idea of the Andes Mountains,
only more rugged and steeper nearing the crest. From the ground he
looked to be not more than sixteen hands high, but as soon as I was up
on top of him I immediately discerned that it was not sixteen hands--it
was sixteen miles. What I had taken for the horse's blaze face was
a snow-capped peak. Miss Anna Peck might have felt at home up there,
because she has had the experience and is used to that sort of thing,
but I am no mountain climber myself.

Before I could make any move to descend to the lower and less rarefied
altitudes the horse began executing a few fancy steps, and he started
traveling sidewise with a kind of a slanting bias movement that was
extremely disconcerting, not to say alarming, instead of proceeding
straight ahead as a regular horse would. I clung there astraddle of his
ridge pole, with my fingers twined in his mane, trying to anticipate
where he would be next, in order to be there to meet him if possible;
and I resolved right then that, if Providence in His wisdom so willed it
that I should get down from up there alive, I would never do so again.
However, I did not express these longings in words--not at that time. At
that time there were only two words in the English language which seemed
to come to me. One of them was "Whoa" and the other was "Ouch," and
I spoke them alternately with such rapidity that they merged into the
compound word "Whouch," whic