"Mercy on me! what a providential escape!" says I to the gentleman; "what wicked wretch could have heaped up things in the road? I do hope they'll be found out and sent to State's prison. Why, it's just as bad as blocking up a train of cars. Such nice-looking riders, too!"
The gentleman looked a trifle puzzled, then he smiled a little funnily, and says he:
"Perhaps you do not understand that this is a 'hurdle-race.'"
"No," says I; "they told me that it would be horse-racing—nothing worse than that."
"Well," says he, "it is nothing worse than that, only a little more dangerous, and to you ladies more interesting, because the riders are all gentlemen."
"What, those men in the caps, gentlemen—not circus-riders, nor nothing?"
He laughed, and says he:
"I dare say no one of them has ever been in a circus since he left off tunics, but they have learned to hunt, and love these hard leaps."
"You don't mean to say that they skiver over such fences on purpose?" says I.
"Indeed they do, and build them higher and broader every year."