" Pride must have a fall--I
confess mine was prostrate in the dust. These words cut me to
the heart. What! is it come to this, poor Mohawk, that you, the
admiration of all but the envious, the great Mohawk, the oracle
horse, the standard by which all other horses are measured--trots
next to Mohawk, only yields to Mohawk, looks like Mohawk--that you
are, after all, only a counterfeit, and pronounced by a straggling
Yankee to be merely "a pretty fair trotter!"
"If he was trained, I guess he might be made to do a little more.
Excuse me, but if you divide your weight between the knee and the
stirrup, rather most on the knee, and rise forward on the saddle, so
as to leave a little daylight between you and it, I hope I may never
ride this circuit again, if you don't get a mile more an hour out
of him."
What! not enough, I mentally groaned, to have my horse beaten, but
I must be told that I don't know how to ride him; and that, too, by
a Yankee! Aye, there's the rub--a Yankee what? Perhaps a half-bred
puppy, half Yankee, half Bluenose. As there is no escape, I'll try
to make out my riding master. "Your circuit?" said I, my looks
expressing all the surprise they were capable of--"your circuit,
pray what may that be?"
"Oh," said he, "the eastern circuit--I am on the eastern circuit,
sir."
"I have heard," said I, feeling that I now had a lawyer to deal with,
"that there is a great deal of business on this circuit.
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