I went every day to see him, riding the six miles, to the hospital and back, on a donkey, which added another chapter of novel experience. The Canary Island donkey is a very diminutive quadruped, the colour of a mouse and as innocent looking as a lamb. Its ears are about as long as its legs. The price of the donkey’s hire includes the owner, who runs behind and shouts, and prods him with a stick. After two days’ experience I concluded that shouting and prodding were of no use whatever, and realizing that the moral man in me was rapidly degenerating, I decided on the third day to leave the driver at home and even pay a higher price if necessary for the donkey without a driver, intending myself to assume the management of this soft-eyed creature, who perhaps only needed a little petting, for those eyes bespoke a peaceful temper. The owner readily assented to the proposition and very wisely requested me to pay in advance. In a few minutes I had experienced to the full the pain of misplaced confidence. My donkey was a facsimile of the immortal _Modestine_. Having patted the donkey kindly and exchanged with her a long look of mutual regard, I mounted. She started off on an easy trot until the owner was out of sight. Then she stopped and stood still and declined to go on in spite of coaxing, kicking and whipping, until I seriously thought of building a fire under her to get her to move. While I was reflecting upon the adaptation of means to ends and for the time had ceased from all measures of coercion, she started as suddenly as she had stopped and with as little reason. She seemed to be clear outside the principle of causality that inheres in the universe. And having started, she ran anywhere and in every direction, evincing neither purpose nor method in her going except a marked predilection for hedges and brambles.