When the work on the Central Park had fairly commenced, in the spring of 1858, I found—or I fancied—that proper attention to my scattered duties made it necessary that I should have a saddle-horse.
How easily, by the way, the arguments that convince us of these pleasant necessities find their way to the understanding!
Yet, how to subsist a horse after buying one, and how to buy? The memory of a well-bred and keen-eyed gray, dating back to the earliest days of my boyhood, and forming the chief feature of my recollection of play-time for years; an idle propensity, not a whit dulled yet, to linger over Leech’s long-necked hunters, and Herring’s field scenes; an almost superstitious faith in the different analyses of the bones of the racer and of the cart-horse; a firm belief in Frank Forester’s teachings of the value of “blood,”—all these conspired to narrow my range of selection, and, unfortunately, to confine it to a very expensive class of horses.
