The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Talking Horse, by F. Anstey

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Talking Horse
And Other Tales

Author: F. Anstey

Release Date: November 16, 2008 [EBook #27284]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALKING HORSE ***

Produced by David Clarke, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

THE TALKING HORSE

ETC.

* * * * *

THE TALKING HORSE

AND OTHER TALES

BY

F. ANSTEY

AUTHOR OF 'VICE VERSA' 'THE GIANT'S ROBE' 'THE PARIAH' ETC.

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1892

[_All rights reserved_]

PREFACE

These stories originally appeared in 'Macmillan's,' 'Longman's,'
'Atalanta,' 'The Cornhill,' 'The Graphic,' 'Aunt Judy's,' 'The
Reflector,' and Unwin's 'Christmas Annual,' respectively.

F. A.

CONTENTS

PAGE
THE TALKING HORSE 1

THE GOOD LITTLE GIRL 39

A MATTER OF TASTE 72

DON; THE STORY OF A GREEDY DOG 127

TAKEN BY SURPRISE 151

PALEFACE AND REDSKIN 176

SHUT OUT 234

TOMMY'S HERO 250

A CANINE ISHMAEL 274

MARJORY 286

_THE TALKING HORSE_

It was on the way to Sandown Park that I met him first, on that horribly
wet July afternoon when Bendigo won the Eclipse Stakes. He sat opposite
to me in the train going down, and my attention was first attracted to
him by the marked contrast between his appearance and his attire: he had
not thought fit to adopt the regulation costume for such occasions, and
I think I never saw a man who had made himself more aggressively horsey.
The mark of the beast was sprinkled over his linen: he wore snaffle
sleeve-links, a hard hunting-hat, a Newmarket coat, and extremely tight
trousers. And with all this, he fell as far