MY LORD PEMBROKE IN HARNESS
And now that the hoof has brought me to the ground I will not mount again. If I have ridden my pony too hard, bethink you who it was that set me upon him. You remember Isaac Walton's caution when instructing an angler how to bait a hook with a live frog:—"And handle the frog as if you loved him." However infelicitously I may have impaled the pony on my pen, I hope you will own that I have done it as if I loved him. Though I am not ready to say that the "earth sings when he touches it," be assured that he will gallantly carry more praise than I have laid upon him.
I have no quarrel with the motor, though it has made me eat dust more than once. As a means of transporting the body when the object is to arrive, I grant it superlative place. But as a medium between man and Nature it is a failure. It will never bring them together. The motor is restricted to the highway, and from the highway one can never get more from Nature than a nod of half recognition. She remains a stranger undivined.
But on a ramble with a pony, adaptive, unobtrusive, all the leisurely ways are open—the deepwood path, or the trail up the exhilarating steep. As self-effacing as you wish, he saves you from weariness and frees the mind for its own adventure. There will be pause for question, and if Nature ever answers at all, you will hear her. There will be the placid hour that is healing-time with her woods, her skies and waters; and that communion with her divinity which means rest and—haply—peace.
O. T. D.
Transcriber's Note: The photo titled "The Beacons" in the list of illustrations is consistently absent in all available copies from multiple sources. Presumably this is the result of a publisher's error where the illustration was omitted from the final version, but not removed from the listings.