The necessities of the old man prefigure and forerun the dawn of the
immortal childhood. For is not our necessity towards God our highest
blessedness--the fair cloud that hangs over the summit of existence? Thank
God, he has made his children so noble and high that they cannot do
without Him! I believe we are sent into this world just to find this out.
But to leave my reflections and return to my story--such as it is. The
colonel mounted me on an old horse of his, "whom," to quote from Sir
Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, "though he was near twenty years old, he
preferred for a piece of sure service, before a great number of younger."
Now the piece of sure service, in the present instance, was to take care
of old John Smith, who was only a middling horseman, though his friend,
the colonel, would say that he rode pretty well for a lad. The old horse,
in fact, knew not only what he could do, but what I could do, for our
powers were about equal. He looked well about for the gaps and the
narrow places. From weakness in his forelegs, he had become a capital
buck-jumper, as I think Cathcart called him, always alighting over a hedge
on his hind legs, instead of his fore ones, which was as much easier for
John Smith as for Hop o' my Thumb--that was the name of the old horse, he
being sixteen hands, at least.
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