Once, and once only, before I had "found my seat," as horsemen say, and we had become the two animals with one consciousness, or, rather, the one animal with the body of a horse and the head of a man, Jess's back grew sore under the saddle. A liveryman at Woodstock, Illinois, gave us a piece of old linen to wear under the saddle-blanket. It proved cooling and comfortable. We wore it for two or three weeks, and Jess resented the saddle without it. It was not until after several attempts to leave the cloth behind, and I was perfectly sure it was no longer necessary, that I had the hardihood to act against her judgment. Two years afterward I was in the same town again, driving her this time in harness. She found her way directly to that stable on a back street, and when unhitched went straight to the stall wherein the healing linen was applied. Perhaps she missed, as I did, the good Samaritan that poured oil on her wounds.

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When driving, it was my habit always to walk

the steep hills, and when riding to walk down them. Jess early learned the propriety of this procedure. With the carriage she would always stop at the foot of the hill to invite me out, and with the saddle she would stop at the top to

let me down; and she never reversed her invitations.

She certainly had a remembering heart. Once, while waiting for a ferry in the bottom woods of the Wisconsin River, we were terribly assailed by the mosquitoes, so vigorous at sunset. I cut a big brush, needing both hands to handle it, and I lashed her with it, while she, the nervous creature that usually jumped at the crackling of the smallest switch, gratefully rubbed her nose against my face. Ever after, when mosquitoes bothered, she would carry me under the first convenient tree and stop for me to cut the brush.

But enough has been said to show how gentle were her ways to me, how real was the intimacy between us. I have called it a silent companionship, but it was not silent on my part. When we were alone on the road I talked to her much. I sang to her and shouted to her. I do not think she understood what I said; I am quite sure she understood why I said it. derstood my words, but I

She may not have unknow she understood

my noise, and liked it. She was a single rider horse. No one ever found her quite the saddlebeast she came to be to me. I am no expert horseman, but I did give to her gentle handling,

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a uniform and firm hand, and what was more, I presumed much on her intelligence. I trusted to her honor and she did not betray me. She responded to the call from above. Perhaps all sentient beings are more ready to do that than we know.

During the World's Fair summer, Jess was happy in the horse's terrestrial paradise, a clover field with running waters. She was buoyant with life, overflowing with spirits, ready for another campaign through the woods and over the hills, wherever and whenever her human comrade liked to go. In an exuberant moment that marvellous frame, so responsive, so agile, so electric, gave itself to play. In a wild scamper she flew down the steep hillside, around the field and up to the barn. And lo, when the man appeared, Jess was holding up one delicate foreleg, clean and smooth as a sword-blade. She whinnied pitifully. Every nerve was quivering with pain. I was busy working in the great city of Chicago, for the time being the capital city of the world, the audience chamber of humanity, the great cathedral of universal religion. During the next four weeks of great suffering and tender nursing I heard but little of her. Kind hearts

stood between my heart and its pain, but at last I learned that Jess was getting no better and suffering much, and so I left my hurrying work in the busy crowds and went to see my poor friend.

In the very early morning, when the world. was all fresh and the fields cool with dew, I found her blanketed, lying on the lawn, stretched at full length, breathing heavily, suffering much. She was pitiably emaciated. Her poor body was covered with bed-sores and the knee terribly swollen and throbbing. As I approached she lifted a languid head and dropped it again. I spoke, and this time the head came up more quickly, the eye brightened with the old light of reciprocation and tenderness, and she curved her neck for the caress. I plucked some fresh clover; she ate it from my hand and seemed for a moment to forget her pain. Perhaps a flush of hope came into both hearts, but it was only for an instant. The hardest thing to bear was to think of the month of intense and useless suffering she had endured. Within two hours the kindly bullet had brought the end.

A post-mortem examination of the knee showed that the marvellous mechanism, the

wonderful adjustment, had been hopelessly marred; the curiously-wrought knee-cap, or that which answers for it in the horse's anatomy, had been cracked, broken in a dozen pieces. It was evident that the thousand pounds, moving with such terrible momentum down the steep hill, had been stopped by the agile will and prompt nervous system with such playful abruptness that it had cracked the bones in the leg as a child cracks a hickory nut. I never knew how fast Jess could go. I never wanted to know. Doubtless, before I knew her she had speed enough to tempt the trainer, but probably falling short of eminence in that direction, she was allowed to fall back into a more benign career, and thus she became mine. But in the end, those nerves that were more delicate than watchsprings, sinews strong as silk, bones as fine as steel, wrought her undoing. The over-excellency of the creature brought the untimely death. Like some quadrupedal Keats, she died from too much life. She went down to pain and death in her over-sympathetic youth.

Under the over-arching branches of a splendid willow we buried the body of Jess, and that