WHIP AND SPUR BY COL. GEORGE E. WARING, JR. NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMIV COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. CONTENTS. PAGE VIX 7 RUBY 34 WETTSTEIN 67 CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX 93 HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT 138 TWO SCOUTS 162 IN THE GLOAMING 186 FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND 201 WHIP AND SPUR. VIX. 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. Unfortunately, again, the commissioners of the Park had extremely inconvenient ideas of economy, and evidently did not consider, in fixing their schedule of salaries, how much more satisfactory our positions would have been with more generous emolument. How a man with only a Park salary, and with a family to support, could set up a saddle-horse,--and not ride to the dogs,--was a question that exercised not a little of my engineering talent for weeks; and many an odd corner of plans and estimates was figured over with calculations of the cost of forage and shoeing. Stable-room was plenty and free in the condemned buildings of the former occupants, and a little "over-time" of one of the men would suffice for the grooming. I finally concluded that, by giving up cigars, and devoting my energies to the pipe in their stead, I could save enough to pay for my horse's keep; and so, the ways and means having been, in this somewhat vague manner, provided, the next step was to buy a horse. To tell of the days passed at auction sales in the hope (never there realized) of finding goodness and cheapness combined,--of the stationery wasted in answering advertisements based on every conceivable form of false pretence; to describe the numberless broken-kneed, broken-winded, and broken-down brutes that came under inspection,--would be tedious and disheartening.