When he was two and a half years old we decided to break him in. He was
big, and strong, and wilful, and how was a feeble man with no experience
and a black boy confessedly frightened of the big horse to accomplish
such purpose? Tom is at home on a boat, and enjoys outwitting fish and
turtle and dugong. However unstable his craft and surly the sea, he keeps
calm; but with a tempestuous horse, who was wont to play about on the
flat, pawing the air like a tragic actor, and kicking it with devastating
viciousness, well--"Look out!" As was the horse, so was the yard
designed--big and strong. Some of the posts are one foot in diameter, and
four and a half feet in the ground. As neither of us had built a yard
before, there may be original points about this one; but I would admonish
others not to imitate them unless they have time, heaps of time, and an
oppressive stock of enthusiasm, and I may add, fascinating experience,
upon which to draw. The last-mentioned quality is invaluable in all such
enterprises. If you have it, full play is permitted the speculative, if
not the imaginative, faculties. If you have it not, then the work is
merely a brutal exercise, in which a dolt might excel.

During the building of the yard I frequently reflected whether, though
Christmas lived to enjoy a long and laborious age, would all the work he
performed compensate for the strains and aches and bruises suffered.
Circumstances prevented the completion of the yard in exact accordance
with plans, for experience, that harsh stepmother, proved that the
enclosure was unnecessary. The yard exists as a monument to profane
misunderstanding of Christmas's character. Had I realised his
high-mindedness, his amiability, his considerateness and shrewdness, the
yard would never have been built; a month of fearful over-exertion, and
many pains would have been obviated, and poor Christmas saved much
physical weariness and perplexity. At the cost of three ripe bananas all