Your horse as pleased as yourself

Your horse as pleased as yourself

The morning ride, slowly pacing, full of expectation, your horse as pleased as yourself; sharp and clear in the gray atmosphere the leafless trees and white farmhouses stand out, backed by a curtain of mist hanging on the hills in the horizon. With eager eyes you take all in; nothing escapes you; you have cast off care for the day. How pleasant and cheerful everything and everyone looks! Even the cocks and hens, scratching by the road-side, have a friendly air. The turnpike-man relaxes, in favour of your ‘pink,’ his usual grimness. A tramping woman, with one child at her back and two running beside her, asks charity; you suspect she is an impostor, but she looks cold and pitiful; you give her a shilling, and the next day you don’t regret your foolish benevolence. To your mind the well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming life, well-fed cattle, good wheat crops, and a little barley for beer. Not less beautiful is the wild gorse-covered moor never to be reclaimed, I hope where the wiry, white-headed, bright-eyed huntsman sits motionless on his old white horse, surrounded by the pied pack a study for Landseer.

But if the morning ride creates unexecuted cabinet pictures and unwritten sonnets, how delightful ‘the find,’ ‘the run’ along brook-intersected vales, up steep hills, through woodlands, parks, and villages, showing you in byways little gothic churches, ivy-covered cottages, and nooks of beauty you never dreamed of, alive with startled cattle and hilarious rustics.

Fonte: Tamming Horses