第39章

Come home with me,and see my cat,-my clever cat,who can groom herself!Look at your own dog!see how the intelligent creature curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth!Then,again,what a fool the horse is,what a poor,nervous fool!He will start at a piece of white paper in the road as if it was a lion.His one idea,when he hears a noise that he is not accustomed to,is to run away from it.What do you say to those two common instances of the sense and courage of this absurdly overpraised animal?I might multiply them to two hundred,if I chose to exert my mind and waste my breath,which I never do.I prefer coming at once to my last charge against the horse,which is the most serious of all,because it affects his moral character.I accuse him boldly,in his capacity of servant to man,of slyness and treachery.I brand him publicly,no matter how mild he may look about the eyes,or how sleek he may be about the coat,as a systematic betrayer,whenever he can get the chance,of the confidence reposed in him.What do you mean by laughing and shaking your head at me?'

'Oh,Thomas,Thomas!'said Goodchild.'You had better give me my hat;you had better let me get you that physic.'

'I will let you get anything you like,including a composing draught for yourself,'said Thomas,irritably alluding to his fellow-apprentice's inexhaustible activity,'if you will only sit quiet for five minutes longer,and hear me out.I say again the horse is a betrayer of the confidence reposed in him;and that opinion,let me add,is drawn from my own personal experience,and is not based on any fanciful theory whatever.You shall have two instances,two overwhelming instances.Let me start the first of these by asking,what is the distinguishing quality which the Shetland Pony has arrogated to himself,and is still perpetually trumpeting through the world by means of popular report and books on Natural History?I see the answer in your face:it is the quality of being Sure-Footed.He professes to have other virtues,such as hardiness and strength,which you may discover on trial;but the one thing which he insists on your believing,when you get on his back,is that he may be safely depended on not to tumble down with you.Very good.Some years ago,I was in Shetland with a party of friends.They insisted on taking me with them to the top of a precipice that overhung the sea.It was a great distance off,but they all determined to walk to it except me.I was wiser then than I was with you at Carrock,and I determined to be carried to the precipice.There was no carriage-road in the island,and nobody offered (in consequence,as I suppose,of the imperfectly-civilised state of the country)to bring me a sedan-chair,which is naturally what I should have liked best.A Shetland pony was produced instead.I remembered my Natural History,I recalled popular report,and I got on the little beast's back,as any other man would have done in my position,placing implicit confidence in the sureness of his feet.And how did he repay that confidence?

Brother Francis,carry your mind on from morning to noon.Picture to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog,bounded by low stony hills.Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene,and sketch me in it,with outstretched arms,curved back,and heels in the air,plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and mud.Place just behind me the legs,the body,and the head of a sure-footed Shetland pony,all stretched flat on the ground,and you will have produced an accurate representation of a very lamentable fact.And the moral device,Francis,of this picture will be to testify that when gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland ponies,they will find to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but broken reeds.There is my first instance -and what have you got to say to that?'

'Nothing,but that I want my hat,'answered Goodchild,starting up and walking restlessly about the room.

'You shall have it in a minute,'rejoined Thomas.'My second instance'-(Goodchild groaned,and sat down again)-'My second instance is more appropriate to the present time and place,for it refers to a race-horse.Two years ago an excellent friend of mine,who was desirous of prevailing on me to take regular exercise,and who was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my legs to expect no very active compliance with his wishes on their part,offered to make me a present of one of his horses.Hearing that the animal in question had started in life on the turf,I declined accepting the gift with many thanks;adding,by way of explanation,that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of embodied hurricane,upon which no sane man of my character and habits could be expected to seat himself.My friend replied that,however appropriate my metaphor might be as applied to race-horses in general,it was singularly unsuitable as applied to the particular horse which he proposed to give me.From a foal upwards this remarkable animal had been the idlest and most sluggish of his race.Whatever capacities for speed he might possess he had kept so strictly to himself,that no amount of training had ever brought them out.He had been found hopelessly slow as a racer,and hopelessly lazy as a hunter,and was fit for nothing but a quiet,easy life of it with an old gentleman or an invalid.When I heard this account of the horse,I don't mind confessing that my heart warmed to him.

Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the back of a steed as lazy as himself,presenting to a restless world the soothing and composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur,too peaceable in his habits to alarm anybody,swam attractively before my eyes.