Cobbs Anatomy | Page 7

feet. When he does this my friend bends forward and clutches him round the neck tightly. I think he is trying to whisper in the horse's ear and beg him in Heaven's name to forbear; but what he looks like is Santa Claus with a clean shave, sitting on the combing of a very steep house with his feet hanging over the eaves, peeking down the chimney to see if the children are asleep yet. When that horse dies he will still have finger marks on his throat and the authorities will suspect foul play probably.
Once I tried it myself. I was induced to scale the heights of a horse that was built somewhat along the general idea of the Andes Mountains, only more rugged and steeper nearing the crest. From the ground he looked to be not more than sixteen hands high, but as soon as I was up on top of him I immediately discerned that it was not sixteen hands--it was sixteen miles. What I had taken for the horse's blaze face was a snow-capped peak. Miss Anna Peck might have felt at home up there, because she has had the experience and is used to that sort of thing, but I am no mountain climber myself.
Before I could make any move to descend to the lower and less rarified altitudes the horse began executing a few fancy steps, and he started traveling sidewise with a kind of a slanting bias movement that was extremely disconcerting, not to say alarming, instead of proceeding straight ahead as a regular horse would. I clung there astraddle of his ridge pole, with my fingers twined in his mane, trying to anticipate where he would be next, in order to be there to meet him if possible; and I resolved right then that, if Providence in His wisdom so willed it that I should get down from up there alive, I would never do so again. However, I did not express these longings in words--not at that time. At that time there were only two words in the English language which seemed to come to me. One of them was "Whoa" and the other was "Ouch," and I spoke them alternately with such rapidity that they merged into the compound word "Whouch," which is a very expressive word and one that I would freely recommend to others who may be situated as I was.
At that moment, of all the places in the world that I could think of--and I could think of a great many because the events of my past life were rapidly flashing past me--as is customary, I am told, in other cases of grave peril, such as drowning--I say of all the places in the world there were just two where I least desired to be--one was up on top of that horse and the other was down under him. But it seemed to be a choice of the two evils, and so I chose the lesser and got under him. I did this by a simple expedient that occurred to me at the moment. I fell off. I was tramped on considerably, and the earth proved to be harder than it looked when viewed from an approximate height of sixteen miles up, but I lived and breathed--or at least I breathed after a time had elapsed--and I was satisfied. And so, having gone through this experience myself, I am in position to appreciate what any other man of my general build is going through as I see him bobbing by-- the poor martyr, sacrificing himself as a burnt offering, or anyway a blistered one--on the high altar of a Gothic ruin of a horse. And, besides, I know that riding a horse doesn't reduce a fat man. It merely reduces the horse.
So it goes--the fat man is always up against it. His figure is half-masted in regretful memory of the proportions he had once, and he is made to mourn. Most sports and many gainful pursuits are closed against him. He cannot play lawn tennis, or, at least according to my observation, he cannot play lawn tennis oftener than once in two weeks. In between games he limps round, stiff as a hat tree and sore as a mashed thumb. Time was when he might mingle in the mystic mazes of the waltz, tripping the light fantastic toe or stubbing it, as the case may be. But that was in the days of the old-fashioned square dance, which was the fat man's friend among dances, and also of the old-fashioned two-step, and not in these times when dancing is a cross between a wrestling match, a contortion act and a trip on a roller-coaster, and is either named for an animal, like the Bunny Hug and the