Horseback riding is all right for mounted policemen and Colonel
W. F. Cody and members of the Stickney family and the party who
used to play Mazeppa in the sterling drama of that name. That is
how those persons make their living. They are suited for it and
acclimated to it. It is also all right for equestrian statues of
generals in the Civil War. But it is not a fit employment for a
fat man and especially for a fat man who insists on trying to ride
a hard-trotting horse English style, which really isn't riding at
all when you come right down to cases, but an outdoor cure for
neurasthenia invented, I take it, by a British subject who was
nervous himself and hated to stay long in one place. So, as I
was saying, I sit there on my comfortable park bench and watch
those friends of mine bouncing by, each wearing on his face that
set expression which is seen also on the faces of some men while
waltzing, and on the faces of most women when entertaining their
relatives by marriage. I have one friend who is addicted to this
form of punishment in a violent, not to say a malignant form. He
uses for his purpose a tall and self-willed horse of the Tudor
period--a horse with those high dormer effects and a sloping
mansard. This horse must have been raised, I think, in the
knockabout song-and-dance business. Every time he hears music or
thinks he hears it he stops and vamps with his feet. When he
does this my friend bends forward and clutches him round the neck
tightly. I think he is trying to whisper in the horse's ear and
beg him in Heaven's name to forbear; but what he looks like is
Santa Claus with a clean shave, sitting on the combing of a very
steep house with his feet hanging over the eaves, peeking down the
chimney to see if the children are asleep yet. When that horse
dies he will still have finger marks on his throat and the
authorities will suspect foul play probably.