A certain magazine, that shall be nameless, I read every month. Not
because its pale contents, largely furnished by worthy ladies, contain
many red corpuscles, but because as a child I saw its numbers lying
upon the table in the "library," as much a part of that table as the
big vase lamp that glowed above it.
My father and mother read the magazine with much enjoyment, for,
doubtless, when its editor was young, the precious prose and poetry of
Araminta Perkins and her ilk satisfied him not at all.
Therefore, in memory of days that will never come again, I read this
old favorite; sometimes--I must confess it--with pain.
It chanced that a story about horses--aye, race horses--was approved
and sanctified by the august editor.
This story, when I found it sandwiched between _Jane Somebody's
Impressions Upon Seeing an Italian Hedge_, and three verses entitled
_Resurgam_, or something like that, I straightway bore to "Blister"
Jones, horse-trainer by profession and gentleman by instinct.
"What that guy don't know about a hoss would fill a book," was his
comment after I had read him the story.