wift as a race-horse and as wild as a Deer.
The best mounted horsemen can seldom approach him, and it is generally
necessary to send a rifle-ball after him, if he is wanted very much.
His flesh is considered a great delicacy, which is another difference
between him and the tame animal.

If any of you were by accident to get near enough to a wild Ass to
observe him closely, you would be very apt to suppose him to be one of
those long-eared fellows which must be beaten and stoned and punched
with sticks, if you want to get them into the least bit of a trot, and
which always want to stop by the roadside, if they see so much as a
cabbage-leaf or a tempting thistle.

But you would find yourself greatly mistaken and astonished when, as
soon as this wild creature discovered your presence, he went dashing
away, bounding over the gullies and brooks, clipping it over the
rocks, scudding over the plains, and disappearing in the distance like
a runaway cannon-ball.

And yet if some of these fleet and spirited animals should be
captured, and they and their descendants for several generations
should be exposed to all sorts of privations and hardships; worked
hard as soon as their spirits were broken, fed on mean food and very
little of it; beaten, kicked, and abused; exposed to cold climates, to
which their nature does not suit them, and treated in every way as our
Jackasses are generally treated, they would soon become as slow, poky,
and dull as any Donkey you ever saw.

If we have nothing else, it is very well to have a good ancestry, and
no nobleman in Europe is proportionately as well descended as the
Jackass.

ANCIENT RIDING.

There are a great many different methods by which we can take a ride.
When we are very young we are generally very well pleased with what
most boys and girls call "piggy-back" riding, and when we get older we
delight in horses and carriages, and some of us even take pleasure in
the motion of railroad cars.

Other methods are not so pleasant. Persons who have tried it say that
riding a Camel, a little Donkey, or a rail, is exceedingly
disagreeable until you are used to it, and there are various other
styles of progression which are not nearly so comfortable as walking.

[Illustration]

There were in ancient times contrivances for riding which are at
present entirely unknown, except among half-civilized nations, and
which must have been exceedingly pleasant.

When, for instance, an Egyp