The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
Children's literature
lady-love, would give him to ride when honor and life depended on
bottom and speed.'
"All that afternoon the beautiful mare stood over me, while away to
the right of us the hoarse tide of battle flowed and ebbed. What
charm, what delusion of memory held her there? Was my face to her
as the face of her dead master, sleeping a sleep from which not
even the wildest roar of battle, no, nor her cheerful neigh at
morning, would ever wake him? Or is there in animals some instinct,
answering to our intuition, only more potent, which tells them whom
to trust and whom to avoid? I know not, and yet some such sense
they may have, they must have; or else why should this mare so
fearlessly attach herself to me? By what process of reason or
instinct I know not, but there she chose me for her master; for
when some of my men at dusk came searching, and found me, and,
laying me on a stretcher, started toward our lines, the mare,
uncompelled, of her own free will, followed at my side; and all
through that stormy night of wind and rain, as my men struggled
along through the mud and mire toward Harrison's Landing, the mare
followed, and ever after, until she died, was with me, and was
mine, and I, so far as man might be, was hers. I named her Gulnare.
"As quickly as my wound permitted, I was transported to Washington,
whither I took the mare with me. Her fondness for me grew daily,
and soon became so marked as to cause universal comment. I had her
boarded while in Washington at the corner of--Street and--Avenue.
The groom had instructions to lead her around to the window against
which was my bed, at the hospital, twice every day, so that by
opening the sash I might reach out my hand and pet her. But the
second day, no sooner had she reached the street, than she broke
suddenly from the groom and dashed away at full speed. I was lying,
bolstered up in bed, reading, when I heard the rush of flying feet,
and in an instant, with a loud, joyful neigh, she checked herself
in front of my window. And when the nurse lifted the sash, the
beautiful creature thrust her head through the aperture, and rubbed
her nose against my shoulder like a dog. I am not ashamed to say
that I put both my arms around her neck, and, burying my face in
her silken mane, kissed her again and again. Wounded, weak, and
away from home, with only strangers to wait upon me, and scant
service at that, the affection of this lovely creature for me, so
tender and touching, seemed almost human, and my heart went out to
her beyond any power of expression, as to the only being, of all
the thousands around me, who thought of me and loved me. Shortly
after her appearance at my window, the groom, who had divined where
he should find her, came into the yard. But she would not allow him
to come near her, much less touch her. If he tried to approach she
would lash out at him with her heels most spitefully, and then,
laying back her ears and opening her mouth savagely, would make a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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