with a blending of reserve, curiosity, and suspicion, as he snoodled
beside his demure old mother. The name at once suggested itself. It seems
the more appropriate now, for he is whitish, with flowing mane and
sweeping tail, of a fair breadth, and open countenance.

Can the biography of a horse be anything but crude, lacking reference to
ancestry? On this point there is the silence of a pure ignorance, and the
record will be deficient in other essentials. Moreover, none of the
phrases of the cult are at command, nor can a purely domestic story be
decorated with clipped, straw-in-the-mouth, stable-smelling terms.

Christmas's mother was a commonplace cart creature with a bad cough. It
was a chronic cough, and in course of time its tuggings took her on a
very long journey. She passed away, assisted towards the end with a
cruel yet compassionate bullet, for in my agitation I made a fluky shot.
She died on the beach, and as the tide rose we floated her carcass into
the bay to the outer edge of the coral reef. The following morning the
sea gave up the dead not its own. Once more we towed it away into the
current which races north.

Some time before these reiterated ceremonies Christmas had been born,
and I was grateful to the old mare, whose chronic cough had become one of
the sounds of the Island, for he is an ornament, a chum, a companion,
and a real character. I find myself confronted by inherent disadvantage,
for I cannot even describe his points in popular language. He is a
"clean-skin." That is the only horsey (or should it be equine?) phrase in
my vocabulary. He is a "clean-skin," and in more than one sense. Clean
describes him--character and all--and I like the word. He is 5 ft. 41 in.
at the shoulders, barefooted, for he has never known a shoe, and his toes
are long; his waist measurement is 6 ft. 8 in., his tail sweeps the