Note 18 — PART I.

Talking of a horse being self-dependent in his movement on the road, puts me in mind of a challenge once accepted by a very practical horseman, to ride a notorious stumbler (reduced by this defect to mere farm-work) three times round Stephen’s Green, Dublin (a distance of over three miles), without falling. Given his choice of bits, some being of the severest kind, he rejected them all, desiring the groom to get him a common hemp halter, and with this simple head-gear, riding bare-backed, he accomplished the distance without the slightest mishap, and thereby won a large bet. The groom, however, resumed the use of the bit to ride the horse home (now feeling sufficient confidence to trust himself on his back instead of leading him), when the animal fell on his knees before he had gone a hundred yards.