Page 329 - The Story of My Lif

Helen has been greatly interested in the story of “Black Beauty.”

To show how quickly she perceives and associates ideas, I will give an instance
which all who have read the book will be able to appreciate. I was reading the
following paragraph to her: “The horse was an old, worn-out chestnut, with an

ill-kept coat, and bones that showed plainly through it; the knees knuckled over,
and the forelegs were very unsteady. I had been eating some hay, and the wind
rolled a little lock of it that way, and the poor creature put out her long, thin neck
and picked it up, and then turned round and looked about for more. There was a
hopeless look in the dull eye that I could not help noticing, and then, as I was
thinking where I had seen that horse before, she looked full at me and said,
‘Black Beauty, is that you?’”

At this point Helen pressed my hand to stop me. She was sobbing convulsively.
“It was poor Ginger,” was all she could say at first. Later, when she was able to
talk about it, she said: “Poor Ginger! The words made a distinct picture in my
mind. I could see the way Ginger looked; all her beauty gone, her beautiful
arched neck drooping, all the spirit gone out of her flashing eyes, all the
playfulness gone out of her manner. Oh, how terrible it was!

I never knew before that there could be such a change in anything. There were
very few spots of sunshine in poor Ginger’s life, and the sadnesses were so
many!” After a moment she added, mournfully, “I fear some people’s lives are
just like Ginger’s.”

This morning Helen was reading for the first time Bryant’s poem, “Oh, mother
of a mighty race!” I said to her, “Tell me, when you have read the poem through,
who you think the mother is.” When she came to the line, “There’s freedom at
thy gates, and rest,”

she exclaimed: “It means America! The gate, I suppose, is New York City, and
Freedom is the great statue of Liberty.” After she had read “The Battlefield,” by
the same author, I asked her which verse she thought was the most beautiful. She
replied, “I like this verse best: