Phaeton Rogers: A Novel of Boy Life

ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 743 AND 745 BROADWAY 1881
COPYRIGHT BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1881
TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 201-213 East 12th Street, NEW YORK.

A MORNING CANTER.
Nothing is more entertaining than a morning canter in midsummer, while the dew is sparkling on the grass, and the robins are singing their joyful songs, and the east is reddening with the sunrise, and the world is waking up to enjoy these beautiful things a little, before the labors of the day begin.
And here is one of the many advantages of being a boy. When ladies and gentlemen ride horseback, it is considered necessary to have as many horses as riders; but an indefinite number of boys may enjoy a ride on one horse, all at the same time; and often the twenty riders who walk get a great deal more fun out of it than the one rider who rides. I think the best number of riders is three—one to be on the horse, and one to walk along on each side and keep off the crowd. For there is something so noble in the sight of a boy on a horse—especially when he is on for the first time—that, before he has galloped many miles, he is pretty certain to become the centre of an admiring throng, all eyes being turned upon the boy, and all legs keeping pace with the horse.
It falls to the lot of few boys to take such a ride more than once in a lifetime. Some, poor fellows! never experience it at all. But whatever could happen to any boy, in the way of adventure, was pretty sure to happen to Phaeton Rogers, who was one of those lucky fellows that are always in the middle of everything, and generally play the principal part. And yet it was not so much luck or accident as his own genius; for he had hardly come into the world when he began to try experiments with it, to see if he couldn't set some of the wheels of the universe turning in new directions. The name his parents gave him was Fayette; but the boys turned it into Phaeton, for a reason which will be explained in the course of the story.