My Quest of the Arab Horse (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...PARTICULAR. This chapter is going to be a digression. I am going to let horses go by for the moment and talk about something else. So you have fair warning to skip the chapter and catch up further on. But after all, my present text is "dog"; and if you are truly a horse-lover you must almost always necessarily be a dog-lover. The two things somehow go together. Besides, although the rather involved story I am about to relate, began in Morris Plains, N. J., and was continued in Paris, Constantinople and Aleppo, it ended in the desert and on the way to visit the Sheikh Ali, of which I told in the last chapter. That is my excuse to you for telling it at all. To myself I do not have to make any excuse of any kind--I just simply have to tell the story. And here it is for what it is worth: When I left Morris Plains I wanted to take with me two worthy Airedale terriers that were more or less (rather more) members of the family. Instantly there went up from the human part of the household, a wail that the dogs would be in the way. One of the dogs had been on a trip as far as Oregon, and had never been in the way; but as this wail went up from everybody who was not in the least concerned in the matter, and notwithstanding that the dogs wanted to go, I chucked the plan. I hated to leave them, for a dog's love in a strange place is comforting, and these two dogs I had known from puppies, and they knew me. But they were left behind and not even allowed to say good-bye to me at the station, and after that, they were forgotten for a time at least. On the voyage to Havre we met a traveller, an Englishman, of course, who had lived and hunted everywhere, and who insisted at every point in the conversation "that on the Euphrates River, one always...