Phemie Frost's Experiences

by Ann S. Stephens

Horse-racing is a science not unknown, in its rudiments, to our rural population. You can remember when we took our first lessons, bareback, with a rope-halter looped around the horse's nose for a bridle. No—that was our second lesson; the first was on father's old grey horse, which was blind of one eye, and had a natural saddle curved into his back. Being a mite of a child, I sat in that hollow like a bird in its nest, hung on to the mane with one hand, and held a crooked stick before the eye that could see when I wanted the creature to turn. In this way I began my horse-alphabet. First, we waded through the plantains and burdocks, at a slow walk, with a stumble now and then, which set my little heart to quaking like a swampy bog trod upon. Then I grew venturesome, and the old grey warmed into a soft trot, which shook me up like anything, but was more exhilarating than the walk. With my bare feet pressed close to the animal's side and my fingers gripped into his mane, I began to rattle my stick timidly against his shoulder; at which he broke trot and racked himself off into a canter, which made my heart leap with every fall of his hoofs, and filled it with the courage of a trooper.

Didn't we wade through the burdocks and sweet ferns then! Didn't we ride round and round that pasture lot, without giving the dear old beast time for a bite of grass or a fair nip at the sweet ferns! Didn't my crooked stick rattle and my hair fly out in the wind! Didn't my mother scream after me, and my father rush out like a crazy man, with both arms spread out, and try to head Old Grey off! Of course he did. But the dear old horse didn't want to give up, and I didn't mean that he should; so he shied, and, of course, having nothing to hold him in by but the tuft of hair and the stick, he left father behind, and, I do believe, kicked up a trifle, just to show his independence.

That was my first lesson on horseback. On the second, my father insisted on haltering the creature, which gave me a pull at his head, and mane, too, which rather interfered with the use of my crooked stick, and bunched me up, till father called out to me to sit up straight—which I did, at last, going it with both hands on the halter, and the hair blowing about my face like a veil. That morning Old Grey and I jumped a brook a full yard wide, and cleared both banks beautifully.

After that I did a great deal of bareback riding, along the road and in the pasture lots, and could sit and ride like a trooper before I ever got into a side-saddle or knew what a curb-bit was.

Sisters, that is the way to learn things—begin at the beginning, and get a firm, steady seat before you attempt to cut a dash. The lady that can't sit her horse handsomely without regard to bit or stirrup, needn't set herself up as much of a rider—at any rate, in our part of the country.

So much for one kind of racing. Now for the water-course.

We used to send little boats, dug out with a jack-knife, under paper sails, down that brook by the school-house, and see them swamped among the cowslips or capsized in the eddies, when we were in the A B C class. Some of us went far enough to sail down the mill stream in a canoe dug out of the trunk of some big tree. In fact, I have a remembrance of crossing a large river in a scow pushed forward with awful long poles. But beyond these rudimental experiences, ship-rowing is not indigenous to the Green Mountains, as a general thing, and I do not see how it can ever become a Vermont institution, yet awhile. Therefore I say, horse-racing you can understand, but ship-racing is really a novelty in the Mountains.

Now, a yacht, sisters, is nothing more or less than a baby schooner, which has two masts, or a sloop, that has one, built up slender and graceful, with a cock-pit, which is in the stern, and a cooking-room, which is in the bow, and all the other fixings which make it as much like a ship as a first-rate baby-house is like an old homestead.

Dempster has been to Washington, and got some contracts or something, and what does he do but come home one hot day when we were all just sweltering in white loose gowns, and says he:

"Girls, what do you say to going down to the Regatta?"