My experience teaches that no sage (or gentleman) should chase the
butterfly on horseback. You are liable to put your net over your horse's
head instead of the butterfly. The butterfly keeps rather ahead of the
horse. You may throw your horse when you mean to throw the net. The idea
is a romantic one; it carries you back to the days of chivalry, when
court-butterflies _were_ said to have been netted from the saddle,--but
it carries you nowhere else in particular, unless perhaps into a small
branch of the Merced, where you don't want to go. Then, too, if you slip
down and leave your horse standing while you steal on a giant _Papilio_
which is sucking the deer-weed in _such_ a sweet spot for a cast, your
horse (perhaps he has heard of the French general who said, "Asses and
_savans_ to the centre!") may discover that he also is a sage, and
retire to botanize while you are butterflying,--a contingency which
entails your wading the Merced after him five several times, and finally
going back to camp in wet disgust to procure another horse and a lariat.
An experience faintly hinted at in the above suggestions soon convinced
me that the great arm of the service in butterfly-warfare is infantry.
After I had turned myself into a modest Retiarius, I had no end to
success.
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