That was my first lesson on horseback. On the second, my father insisted on haltering the creature, which gave me a pull at his head, and mane, too, which rather interfered with the use of my crooked stick, and bunched me up, till father called out to me to sit up straight--which I did, at last, going it with both hands on the halter, and the hair blowing about my face like a veil. That morning Old Grey and I jumped a brook a full yard wide, and cleared both banks beautifully.
After that I did a great deal of bareback riding, along the road and in the pasture lots, and could sit and ride like a trooper before I ever got into a side-saddle or knew what a curb-bit was.
Sisters, that is the way to learn things--begin at the beginning, and get a firm, steady seat before you attempt to cut a dash. The lady that can"t sit her horse handsomely without regard to bit or stirrup, needn"t set herself up as much of a rider--at any rate, in our part of the country.
So much for one kind of racing. Now for the water-course.
We used to send little boats, dug out with a jack-knife, under paper sails, down that brook by the school-house, and see them swamped among the cowslips or capsized in the eddies, when we were in the A B C cla.s.s.
Some of us went far enough to sail down the mill stream in a canoe dug out of the trunk of some big tree. In fact, I have a remembrance of crossing a large river in a scow pushed forward with awful long poles.
But beyond these rudimental experiences, ship-rowing is not indigenous to the Green Mountains, as a general thing, and I do not see how it can ever become a Vermont inst.i.tution, yet awhile. Therefore I say, horse-racing you can understand, but ship-racing is really a novelty in the Mountains.
Now, a yacht, sisters, is nothing more or less than a baby schooner, which has two masts, or a sloop, that has one, built up slender and graceful, with a c.o.c.k-pit, which is in the stern, and a cooking-room, which is in the bow, and all the other fixings which make it as much like a ship as a first-rate baby-house is like an old homestead.
Dempster has been to Washington, and got some contracts or something, and what does he do but come home one hot day when we were all just sweltering in white loose gowns, and says he:
"Girls, what do you say to going down to the Regatta?"
"The Regatta," says I, "what is that--anything cool?"
"Why, it is a race given by the Yacht Club," says he, "and of course it will be cool if we go out to sea."
"Well, I don"t object to seeing, if that will make things cool," says I; "but how a club can race, except when it is in a policeman"s hand, I can"t begin to make out."
Cousin D. gave one of his long, hearty laughs, and says he:
"Now, really, Phmie, don"t you understand what a club is?"
I felt the blood rise up into my face.
"Don"t I know what a club is?" says I. "Well, I should rather think so.
There are hickory clubs, oak clubs, yellow pine knots, that answer pretty well, and locust clubs, but how a little ship can be turned into a club beats me!"
"Oh, it isn"t one ship that makes the club, but a good many," says he, "crack ships, too."
I just dropped the two hands I had been holding up, quite out of breath.
"So a good many ships make one club, do they?" says I.
"Just so," says he. "When a lot of men join together for any particular thing, it is called a "club." There is the Jockey Club, the Union Club, the Rural Club, the Union League Club, the Yacht Club."
"Oh, for mercy"s sake, do stop before you club me to death," says I, clapping both hands to my ears. "We have got timber enough in Vermont, but clubs of any kind are not in our line. Just tell me what you want of us, and we"ll say Yes or No."
"Well, I want you to get into my new yacht, and go a little way out to sea," says he.
"To see what?" says I.
"The Regatta."
"Can"t you for once speak honest English?" says I.
"Well, a Yacht Race," says he.
"That is, little ships running races," says I; "but where?"
"On the Atlantic Ocean," says he.
My spirit rose. I have seen the East River and the upper bay, and more than once have caught a view of the Long Island Sound from the car-windows, but a live ocean--a great, broad, heaving ocean, with waves roaring up thirty feet high, is an object we do not often get a chance to contemplate on the slopes of the Green Mountains. Would I go and see that? Wouldn"t I?"
"Then you will go?" says Cousin Dempster.
"Go!" says I, "yes, if I have to walk afoot with snow-shoes on."
"Well, then, get your yachting clothes ready," says he.
"Pink silk?" I suggested.
"Oh, no; something that can stand the water," says he.
"Say black alpaca, with a white hat and plumes--principle and patriotism before anything else," says I.
"That will be lovely on the blue waves," says Cousin E. E. "I will wear a blue feather, and Cecilia shall turn up her Leghorn flat with an anchor."
"That"s just the thing," says Cousin D., with maritime enthusiasm. "I have had the yacht painted white, and on her long white pennant you will find a name all Vermonters love particularly, and the world generally."
"What is her name?" we all said right out at once.
"The Vermonter," says he, straightening himself up proudly.
We all sprang to out feet, and clapped our hands with the wildest enthusiasm.
"I"m not afraid to dare the wildest storms on the ocean with that craft," says I.
"Nor I."
"Nor I."
Sisters, it was a spontaneous outburst of pure state patriotism--even that child Cecilia seemed to feel it--for ten minutes after she was busy as a bee, sewing a silver anchor on her Leghorn flat, and that day, for the first time, I kissed the child with spontaneosity.
LXXI.
YACHT-RACING.
Sisters:--When you go to a yacht-race, the first step is peculiar. You get into a carriage or a car, and ride down to the docks. Then you steam off in a ferry-boat to Staten Island, get into a thing they call a yawl, which floats like a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l, and carries two or three people, and row off to one of the cunningest, prettiest, slenderest, most scrumptious little ships you ever set eyes on, sitting on the water like a white duck with its wings spread.
Some black-walnut steps fell down the side, over which I climbed, with my heart in my mouth, and jumped into a little pew, with a sofa running round it, and some light cross-legged chairs ready for visitors.