“Nothing that anybody could say would hold her back, and so away she went to General Wilson's headquarters. She marched in on General Wilson and asked for her horses back. She had a sweet and winning way, and when she cried and told him how heartsick she was for her horses, and how much she knew they missed her, the General let his feelings get the better of his sense of duty, and gave her an order for every horse taken from the circus.
“One of Wilson's orderlies afterwards gave a reason for giving the horses back, which, while it is not so romantic, may be partly true. The horses were all trained for ring service and most of them were trained to dance to the music, and to fall upon their knees and sides upon being touched upon the haunches with a spur or the whip. The whole bunch was turned over to a military band as their mounts, and the orderly said that during the four days that the band was mounted on those beasts there was not an hour when one of them was not dancing around so that he could not keep time, or else horse and man—sometimes three or four of them—were rolling on the ground together, the musicians having unwittingly given the horse his lying-down cue.”
The boys laughed heartily over this anecdote, and then Charley told a story he had read somewhere about a horse which belonged to a lady who used to ride him in the hunting field. She had had him for three or four years and was constantly petting him and giving him sugar and other dainties. There was a great friendship between them and the horse manifested his affection for his mistress in many ways.
One day while jumping a hedge, horse and rider fell into a ditch; the lady was quite under the horse, her head being between and slightly in front of his fore legs, but there was only a little of his weight that rested on her.
Several men came to her assistance, and at first it was thought that the only way of rescuing her would be by digging her out. It was finally decided to move the horse forward and then lift him up, but there was great fear that in his efforts to rise he would trample on the lady and seriously, if not fatally, injure her. She was able to speak with the men, and told them she was confident the horse would carefully avoid harming her. Her confidence was justified by the result, as he managed to get on his feet without giving her the least scratch, beyond a slight mark on her face, which was made by the first movement of his knees and could not be avoided.
Then George told about two horses belonging to Mr. Allen of Minnesota, that were greatly attached to each other. One day Mr. Allen tied them with strong ropes, about fifty yards apart, where they could eat the grass close to the shore of the little lake. Then he went to a house a little distance away and lay down to take a nap. He hadn't been there long before he heard the sound of a horse's footsteps, and a moment afterward one of his favorites put his head into the door.
The animal gave a slight neigh and then started back towards the lake. Mr. Allen was greatly surprised to find that the horse had broken loose from his fastenings, and also that he had left his mate; surmising that something was wrong, he immediately followed to the edge of the lake, where he found the other horse lying in the water with his feet entangled in the rope, and devoting all his efforts to keep his head above the surface. Mr. Allen at once proceeded to extricate him from his trouble, and as he did so the other horse manifested his joy in every way he could.