Before concluding I would again urge upon my readers the importance of out-of-door exercise, which can hardly be taken in a more agreeable form than that of horseback riding,—a great panacea, giving rest and refreshment to the overworked brain of the student, counteracting many of the pernicious effects of the luxurious lives of the wealthy, and acting upon the workers of the world as a tonic, and as a stimulus to greater exertion.
THE AMERICAN HORSEWOMAN.
CHAPTER I.
THE HORSE.
"Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportioned steed,
His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel a common one,
In shape, in courage, color, pace, and bone."
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—"what a horse should have he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back."
Venus and Adonis.
It is supposed that the original home of the horse was central Asia, and that all the wild horses that range over the steppes of Tartary, the pampas of South America, and the prairies of North America, are descendants of this Asiatic stock.[1] There is, in the history of the world, no accurate statement of the time when the horse was first subjugated by man, but so far back as his career can be traced in the dim and shadowy past, he seems to have been man's servant and companion. We find him, on the mysterious ruins of ancient Egypt, represented with his badge of servitude, the bridle; he figures in myth and fable as the companion of man and gods; he is a prominent figure in the pictured battle scenes of the ancient world; and has always been a favorite theme with poet, historian, and philosopher in all ages.