NAOMI (A HIGH-CASTE ARABIAN MARE).
CHAPTER II.
THE LADY'S HORSE.
There is no more difficult animal to find on the face of the earth than a perfect lady's horse. It is not every one that can indulge in the luxury of a two-hundred-and-fifty to three-hundred-guinea hack, and yet looks, action, and manners will always command that figure, and more. Some people say, what can carry a man can carry a woman. What says Mrs. Power O'Donoghue to this: "A heavy horse is never in any way suitable to a lady. It looks amiss. The trot is invariably laboured, and if the animal should chance to fall, he gives his rider what we know in the hunting-field as 'a mighty crusher.' It is indeed, a rare thing to meet a perfect 'lady's horse.' In all my wide experience I have met but two. Breeding is necessary for stability and speed—two things most essential to a hunter; but good light action is, for a roadster, positively indispensable, and a horse who does not possess it is a burden to his rider, and is, moreover, exceedingly unsafe, as he is apt to stumble at every rut and stone."
Barry Cornwall must have had something akin to perfection in his mind's eye when penning the following lines:—
"Full of fire, and full of bone,
All his line of fathers known;
Fine his nose, his nostrils thin,