me. It was well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coincide
with my own, else I should infallibly have broken my neck in confronting
perils which brought me neither honor nor profit, and in accepting
defiances which, issue how they might, won self-reproach from myself,
and sometimes a gayety of derision from _him_. One only of these
defiances I declined. There was a horse of this same guardian B.'s,
who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew irritable to
excess; and, if any body mounted him, would seek relief to his wounded
feelings in kicking, more or less violently, for an hour. This habit
endeared him to my brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the
same amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking seized
him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments,
especially the bagpipes. Of kicking? But of kicking what or _whom_?
I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors without
exception, but also as many of the debtors as might be found at large;
doctors of medicine more especially, but with no absolute immunity for
the majority of their patients; Jacobins, but not the less
anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems reasonable; but then also,
which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to account
for this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted
form (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously
to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother was
urgent with me to mount _en croupe_ behind himself. But weak as I
usually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion of
the fiend; for I had heard, and have since known proofs of it, that
a horse, when he is ingeniously vicious, sometimes has the power, in
lashing out, of curving round his hoofs, so as to lodge them, by way
of indorsement, in the small of his rider's back; and, of course, he
would have an advantage for such a purpose, in the case of a rider
sitting on the crupper. That sole invitation I persisted in declining.