Black Beauty The autobiography of a horse
about,” and Ginger stamped her foot as if the very thought of him made
her angry. Then she went on:
“If I did not do exactly what he wanted he would get put out, and make
me run round with that long rein in the training field till he had
tired me out. I think he drank a good deal, and I am quite sure that the
oftener he drank the worse it was for me. One day he had worked me hard
in every way he could, and when I lay down I was tired, and miserable,
and angry; it all seemed so hard. The next morning he came for me early,
and ran me round again for a long time. I had scarcely had an hour's
rest, when he came again for me with a saddle and bridle and a new kind
of bit. I could never quite tell how it came about; he had only just
mounted me on the training ground, when something I did put him out
of temper, and he chucked me hard with the rein. The new bit was very
painful, and I reared up suddenly, which angered him still more, and he
began to flog me. I felt my whole spirit set against him, and I began
to kick, and plunge, and rear as I had never done before, and we had a
regular fight; for a long time he stuck to the saddle and punished me
cruelly with his whip and spurs, but my blood was thoroughly up, and I
cared for nothing he could do if only I could get him off. At last after
a terrible struggle I threw him off backward. I heard him fall heavily
on the turf, and without looking behind me, I galloped off to the other
end of the field; there I turned round and saw my persecutor slowly
rising from the ground and going into the stable. I stood under an oak
tree and watched, but no one came to catch me. The time went on, and the
sun was very hot; the flies swarmed round me and settled on my bleeding
flanks where the spurs had dug in. I felt hungry, for I had not eaten
since the early morning, but there was not enough grass in that meadow
for a goose to live on. I wanted to lie down and rest, but with the
saddle strapped tightly on there was no comfort, and there was not a
drop of water to drink. The afternoon wore on, and the sun got low. I
saw the other colts led in, and I knew they were having a good feed.
“At last, just as the sun went down, I saw the old master come out with
a sieve in his hand. He was a very fine old gentleman with quite white
hair, but his voice was what I should know him by among a thousand. It
was not high, nor yet low, but full, and clear, and kind, and when
he gave orders it was so steady and decided that every one knew, both
horses and men, that he expected to be obeyed. He came quietly along,
now and then shaking the oats about that he had in the sieve, and
speaking cheerfully and gently to me: 'Come along, lassie, come along,
lassie; come along, come along.' I stood still and let him come up; he
held the oats to me, and I began to eat without fear; his voice took all
my fear away. He stood by, patting and stroking me while I was eating,
and seeing the clots of blood on my side he seemed very vexed. 'Poor
lassie! it was a bad business, a bad business;' then he quietly took the
rein and led me to the stable; just at the door stood Samson. I laid my
ears back and snapped at him. 'Stand back,' said the master, 'and keep
out of her way; you've done a bad day's work for this filly.' He growled
out something about a vicious brute. 'Hark ye,' said the father, 'a
bad-tempered man will never make a good-tempered horse. You've not
learned your trade yet, Samson.' Then he led me into my box, took off
the saddle and bridle with his own hands, and tied me up; then he called
for a pail of warm water and a sponge, took off his coat, and while the
stable-man held the pail, he sponged my sides a good while, so tenderly
that I was sure he knew how sore and bruised they were. 'Whoa! my pretty
one,' he said, 'stand still, stand still.' His very voice did me good,
and the bathing was very comfortable. The skin was so broken at the
corners of my mouth that I could not eat the hay, the stalks hurt me. He
looked closely at it, shook his head, and told the man to fetch a good
bran mash and put some meal into it. How good that mash was! and so soft
and healing to my mouth. He stood by all the time I was eating, stroking
me and talking to the man. 'If a high-mettled creature like this,'
said he, 'can't be broken by fair means, she will never be good for
anything.'
“After that he often came to see me, and when my mouth was healed the
other breaker, Job, they called him, went on training me; he was steady
and thoughtful, and I soon learned what he wanted.”
08 Ginger's Story Continued
The next time that Ginger and I were together in the paddock she told me
about her first place.
“After my breaking in,” she said, “I was bought by a dealer to match
another chestnut horse. For some weeks he drove us together, and then we
were sold to a fashionable gentleman, and were sent up to London. I had
been driven with a check-rein by the dealer, and I hated it worse
than anything else; but in this place we were reined far tighter, the
coachman and his master thinking we looked more stylish so. We were
often driven about in the park and other fashionable places. You who
never had a check-rein on don't know what it is, but I can tell you it
is dreadful.
“I like to toss my head about and hold it as high as any horse; but
fancy now yourself, if you tossed your head up high and were obliged to
hold it there, and that for hours together, not able to move it at all,
except with a jerk still higher, your neck aching till you did not know
how to bear it. Besides that, to have two bits instead of one--and mine
was a sharp one, it hurt my tongue and my jaw, and the blood from my
tongue colored the froth that kept flying from my lips as I chafed and
fretted at the bits and rein. It was worst when we had to stand by the
hour waiting for our mistress at some grand party or entertainment, and
if I fretted or stamped with impatience the whip was laid on. It was
enough to drive one mad.”
“Did not your master take any thought for you?” I said.
“No,” said she, “he only cared to have a stylish turnout, as they
call it; I think he knew very little about horses; he left that to his
coachman, who told him I had an irritable temper! that I had not been
well broken to the check-rein, but I should soon get used to it; but he
was not the man to do it, for when I was in the stable, miserable and
angry, instead of being smoothed and quieted by kindness, I got only a
surly word or a blow. If he had been civil I would have tried to
bear it. I was willing to work, and ready to work hard too; but to be
tormented for nothing but their fancies angered me. What right had they
to make me suffer like that? Besides the soreness in my mouth, and
the pain in my neck, it always made my windpipe feel bad, and if I had
stopped there long I know it would have spoiled my breathing; but I grew
more and more restless and irritable, I could not help it; and I began
to snap and kick when any one came to harness me; for this the groom
beat me, and one day, as they had just buckled us into the carriage,
and were straining my head up with that rein, I began to plunge and
kick with all my might. I soon broke a lot of harness, and kicked myself
clear; so that was an end of that place.
“After this I was sent to Tattersall's to be sold; of course I could not
be warranted free from vice, so nothing was said about that. My handsome
appearance and good paces soon brought a gentleman to bid for me, and I
was bought by another dealer; he tried me in all kinds of ways and with
different bits, and he soon found out what I could not bear. At last
he drove me quite without a check-rein, and then sold me as a perfectly
quiet horse to a gentleman in the country; he was a good master, and I
was getting on very well, but his old groom left him and a new one came.
This man was as hard-tempered and hard-handed as Samson; he always spoke
in a rough, impatient voice, and if I did not move in the stall the
moment he wanted me, he would hit me above the hocks with his stable
broom or the fork, whichever he might have in his hand. Everything he
did was rough, and I began to hate him; he wanted to make me afraid
of him, but I was too high-mettled for that, and one day when he had
aggravated me more than usual I bit him, which of course put him in a
great rage, and he began to hit me about the head with a riding whip.
After that he never dared to come into my stall again; either my heels
or my teeth were ready for him, and he knew it. I was quite quiet with
my master, but of course he listened to what the man said, and so I was
sold again.
“The same dealer heard of me, and said he thought he knew one place
where I should do well. ''Twas a pity,' he said, 'that such a fine horse
should go to the bad, for want of a real good chance,' and the end of it
was that I came here not long before you did; but I had then made up my
mind that men were my natural enemies and that I must defend myself. Of
course it is very different here, but who knows how long it will last? I
wish I could think about things as you do; but I can't, after all I have
gone through.”
“Well,” I said, “I think it would be a real shame if you were to bite or
kick John or James.”
“I don't mean to,” she said, “while they are good to me. I did bite
James once pretty sharp, but John said, 'Try her with kindness,' and
instead of punishing me as I expected, James came to me with his arm
bound up, and brought me a bran mash and stroked me; and I have never
snapped at him since, and I won't either.”
I was sorry for Ginger, but of course I knew very little then, and I
thought most likely she made the worst of it; however, I found that as
the weeks went on she grew much more gentle and cheerful, and had lost
the watchful, defiant look that she used to turn on any strange person
who came near her; and one day James said, “I do believe that mare is
getting fond of me, she quite whinnied after me this morning when I had
been rubbing her forehead.”
“Ay, ay, Jim, 'tis 'the Birtwick balls',” said John, “she'll be as good
as Black Beauty by and by; kindness is all the physic she wants, poor
thing!” Master noticed the change, too, and one day when he got out of
the carriage and came to speak to us, as he often did, he stroked her
beautiful neck. “Well, my pretty one, well, how do things go with you
now? You are a good bit happier than when you came to us, I think.”
She put her nose up to him in a friendly, trustful way, while he rubbed
it gently.
“We shall make a cure of her, John,” he said.
“Yes, sir, she's wonderfully improved; she's not the same creature that
she was; it's 'the Birtwick balls', sir,” said John, laughing.
This was a little joke of John's; he used to say that a regular course
of “the Birtwick horseballs” would cure almost any vicious horse; these
balls, he said, were made up of patience and gentleness, firmness and
petting, one pound of each to be mixed up with half a pint of common
sense, and given to the horse every day.
09 Merrylegs
Mr. Blomefield, the vicar, had a large family of boys and girls;
sometimes they used to come and play with Miss Jessie and Flora. One
of the girls was as old as Miss Jessie; two of the boys were older, and
there were several little ones. When they came there was plenty of work
for Merrylegs, for nothing pleased them so much as getting on him by
turns and riding him all about the orchard and the home paddock, and
this they would do by the hour together.
One afternoon he had been out with them a long time, and when James
brought him in and put on his halter he said:
“There, you rogue, mind how you behave yourself, or we shall get into
trouble.”
“What have you been doing, Merrylegs?” I asked.