began early to educate one,
having a remarkable faculty for handling them; so that now, after
thirty years of it, there is not much about the equine nature that
he does not understand. He trained a company of Bronchos, which were
afterwards sold; and since then he has gradually got together the
fifteen he now exhibits, and he has others in process of training. He
took these when they were young, two or three years old; and not one
of them, except Jim, who has a bit of outside history, has ever been
used in any other way. They know nothing about carriages or carts,
harness or saddle; they have escaped the cruel curb-bits, the check
reins and blinders of our civilization. Fortunate in that respect. And
they never have had a shoe on their feet. Their feet are perfect, firm
and sound, strong and healthy and elastic; natural, like those of the
Indians, who run barefoot, who go over the rough places of the wilds
as easily as these horses can run up the stairs or over the cobble
stones of the pavement if they were turned loose in the street.

[Illustration: MILITARY DRILL.]

It was a pleasure to know of their life-long exemption from all
such restraints. That accounted in great measure for their beautiful
freedom of motion, for that wondrous grace and charm. Did you ever
think what a complexity of muscles, bones, joints, tendons and other
arrangements, enter into the formation of the knees, hoofs, legs of a
horse; what a piece of mechanism the strong, supple creature is?

These have never had their spirits broken; have never been scolded at
or struck except when a whip was necessary as a rod sometimes is for
a child. The hostlers who take care of them are not allowed to speak
roughly. "Be low-spoken to them," the master says. In the years when
he was educating them he groomed and cared for them himself, with no
other help except that of his two little sons. No one else was allowed
to meddle with them; and, necessarily, they were kept separate from
other horses. Now, wherever they are exhibiting, he always goes out
the first thing in the morning to see them. He passes from one to
another, and they are all expecting the little love pats and slaps
on their glossy sides, the caressings and fondlings and pleasant
greetings of "Chevalier, how are you, old fellow?" "Abdallah,
my beauty," and, "Nellie, my pet!" Some are jealous, Abdallah
tremendously so, and if he does not at once notice her, she lays her
ears back, shows temper, a