University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
An adventure, being the only one in all our history.

As the spring advanced, and the flowers, zephyrs,
and warbling birds, invited out into the country for
air and exercise, our heroine was accustomed to ride
on horseback, than which there is nothing more
healthful, graceful, and becoming in a woman, provided
always she will only ride like a gentlewoman;
that is moderately. On the contrary, there is nothing
which gives me more heartfelt discomposure,
as a gallant bachelor, than to see a woman galloping
through the streets, like a trooper—her feathers
flying, her ribands streaming to the wind, her riding
habit disordered, and herself bouncing up and down,
as if she had a cork saddle under her. It is not
only unseemly and unfeminine, but dangerous, in our
crowded streets; and nothing has preserved them
from the most fatal accidents, but the sagacity of
their horses, which doubtless, knowing the precious
burthens they carry, are particularly careful neither
to be frightened, or to make a false step. Were I to
assume the office of mentor to the young fellows of
the day, I would strenuously advise them to beware
of a woman that always rides on a full gallop.
Depend upon it, she will have her way in every

thing; and that though she may not actually lose
the bit, she will be apt to take it between her teeth;
which is almost as bad.

On these occasions Lucia was generally accompanied
by Miss Appleby, Miss Overend, or some
one of her female friends, and escorted by Highfield
and Goshawk, with the latter of whom our heroine
generally fell into a tete-a-tete in the course of
the ride. It was the third of May—I recollect it
perfectly—when the little party of equestrians set
forth on a morning ride, all gay and hopeful except
Mr. Goshawk, to whom the smiles of nature
were a disquiet, and the music of spring a discord.
He was more than commonly miserable that day,
having observed that Lucia began to sympathize
deeply in his sorrows.

They navigated their course safely through the
various perils of Broadway for some distance. They
met a company of militia with more drums than
privates, and commanded by three brigadier generals;
they encountered the great ox Columbus
dressed in ribbons; they stood the brunt of kites,
earts, bakers' wagons, Broadway accommodations,
charcoal merchants, orange-men and ash-men, and
beggar-women. In short, they escaped unhurt amid
the war of sights, the eternal clatter and confusion of
sounds, the unexampled concatenation of things, animate
and inanimate, natural and unnatural. The
horses, indeed, sometimes pricked up their ears, and
wondered, but displayed no decided symptoms of

affright, until, as ill luck would have it, just as they
came to the corner of Chamber street, a little woman
about four feet high issued suddenly forth from a
shop, with a bonnet, of such alarming dimensions,
and singular incongruity of shape and decoration,
that Lucia's horse, who had never been at a fancy
ball, could stand it no longer. He wheeled suddenly
round, against Mr. Goshawk's steed, and reared.
Mr. Goshawk was partly in a brown study, and partly
so miserable that he did not, as he afterwards affirmed,
exactly recollect where he was, or what was
the matter. At length, he cried out, “Whoa!”
with such a lofty and poetical fervour that he frightened
the horse still more. He now reared worse than
ever, and Lucia, must have lost her seat in a few
moments, when Highfield who was a little in advance
with the other ladies, being roused by Goshawk's
exclamation, looked round, and was at the
horse's head, on foot, in an instant. “Keep your
seat if you can,” said he as he seized the bridle.
A desperate contest now commenced between him
and the horse, who continued rearing and plunging,
now galling Highfield's body and limbs with his
sharp hoofs, and wrenching him violently about from
side to side. Lucia still kept her seat though almost
insensible to where she was, or what was going
forward. It was a struggle between an enraged unruly
beast, and a cool determined man. Highfield
still clung to the bridle, close to the horse's head,
until watching his opportunity, he seized the animal
by the nostrils, with so firm a gripe, as to arrest his
rearings for a moment, during which he seemed
tremblingly to own a master. At the same instant
a gentleman assisted Lucia to dismount, which she
had scarcely done, when the animal, as if recovered
from his astonishment made one plunge, struck his
hoofs into Highfield's breast, threw him on his back
insensible, and dashed away full speed. At the
same moment Mr. Goshawk, who had been exceedingly
active in protesting against the inhumanity of
the crowd, which stood looking on without being
able to render any assistance, was likewise so overcome
by his exertions that he lost his memory, for a
little while, after which he poured forth so eloquent
a felicitation on Lucia's escape from a danger, which,
however slight, had harrowed up his very soul, that
she remembered it long after, when she ought to
have been remembering something else.

Highfield was brought to himself, after some considerable
delay, and, with the young lady, conveyed
home, in a hackney coach. Goshawk did not accompany
them; his senses were so shattered, and his
feelings had so completely overpowered him, that he
was incapable of any thing, but the indulgence of
high wrought sentiment.