hadows across the fields.
Carriages crowded full of smiling people, horses wild to pass each other
and get home; yourself deliciously tired, with half a dozen swift
horses chasing each other through your brain, and trampling down your
conscience.

Well, sisters, I may have been wrong, but frankness is my peculiarity,
and I should like to try it all over again, just once. Don't think hard
of it, but I should.

LXX.

PREPARING FOR SEA.

Dear Sisters:--With an aching head and bitter taste in my mouth, I take
up my pen to write. Myself, and not myself, I sit here as if I had just
come out of the upheaving of an earthquake. If I write anything of what
happened yesterday, it must be sensational; for, of all sensations that
ever riled up a human constitution, that I felt while out to sea beat
all that I ever knew or heard of.

I have been out to a yacht race.

Horse-racing is a science not unknown, in its rudiments, to our rural
population. You can remember when we took our first lessons, bareback,
with a rope-halter looped around the horse's nose for a bridle. No--that
was our second lesson; the first was on father's old grey horse, which
was blind of one eye, and had a natural saddle curved into his back.
Being a mite of a child, I sat in that hollow like a bird in its nest,
hung on to the mane with one hand, and held a crooked stick before the
eye that could see when I wanted the creature to turn. In this way I
began my horse-alphabet. First, we waded through the plantains and
burdocks, at a slow walk, with a stumble now and then, which set my
little heart to quaking like a swampy bog trod upon. Then I grew
venturesome, and the old grey warmed into a soft trot, which shook me up
like anything, but was more exhilarating than the walk. With my bare
feet pressed close to the animal's side and my fingers gripped into his
mane, I began to rattle my stick timidly against his shoulder; at which
he broke trot and racked himself off into a canter, which made my heart
leap with every fall of his hoofs, and filled it with the courage of a
trooper.

Didn't we wade through the burdocks and sweet ferns then! Didn't we ride
round and round that pasture lot, without giving the dear old beast time
for a bite of grass or a fair nip at the sweet ferns! Didn't my crooked
stick rattle and my hair fly out in the wind! Didn't my mother scream
after me, and my father rush out like a crazy man, with both arms spread
out, and try t