He tells you that he sent him with some powder at a bullfinch

He tells you that he sent him with some powder at a bullfinch

Now, Dick does not mean by this that you are to go slowly at every kind of fence. He tells you that he sent him with some powder at a bullfinch; but whatever the pace, you so hold your horse in the last fifty yards up to the taking-off point, that instead of spreading himself out all abroad at every stroke, he feels the bit and gets his hind-legs well under him. If you stand to see Jim Mason or Tom Oliver in the hunting-field going at water, even at what they call forty miles an hour, you will find the stride of their horses a measured beat, and while they spur and urge them they collect them. This is the art no book can teach; but it can teach that it ought to be learned. Thousands of falls have been caused by a common and most absurd phrase, which is constantly repeated in every description of the leaps of a great race or run. He took his horse by the head and lifted him, &c.

Fonte: Tamming Horses