Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just so often, through their queer communications, that the bell-mare was still in the land of picket-line before nose-bags were fastened.
On a day towards the end of April the colonel and I, riding well ahead of the Brigade, passed through deserted Amiens and stopped when we came upon some fifty horses, nose-bags on, halted under the trees along a boulevard in the eastern outskirts of the city. Officers in groups stood beneath, or leaned against, the high wall of a large civil hospital that flanked the roadway.
It was only in the afternoons that these memories troubled Chieftain. In the morning one feels fresh and strong and contented, and, when one has time for any thought at all, there are comforting reflections that in the nose-bags, swung under the truck-seat, are eight quarts of good oats, and that noon must come some time or other.
As we sat looking at him the noon whistle from the village blew and the wise old horses stopped in the middle of a furrow. 'Niram unharnessed them, led them to the shade of a tree, and put on their nose-bags. Then he turned and came toward the house.
'The poor ponies look wistfully for the food of which so very little remains, yet they are not hungry, as recent savings have resulted from food left in their nose-bags.
But no sooner had they all found places, no sooner had the horses got their nose-bags on and the kitchen fires been lighted, than B., who was always anxious about the comforts of his board and lodging, said to me: "There is only one thing for us to do. We are to rest. We must find a bed and a well-furnished table.
Here, too, the signs of the fair were present; in the spaces round the octagonal baptistery, stalls were being spread with fruit and flowers, and here and there laden mules were standing quietly absorbed in their nose-bags, while their drivers were perhaps gone through the hospitable sacred doors to kneel before the blessed Virgin on this morning of her Nativity.
Outside there is a murmur of stablemen trying to fit shrunk nose-bags on to restive horses, varied by the squeal and thump of an Argentine, as he gets home in the ribs of a neighbour who has been fed before him." On the day after this was written our long period of waiting came to an end with orders to go at once to Kroonstadt.
A little way from the entrance, drawn up opposite to the stable-yard, stood a long, clumsy wagonette-brake with coats and green-carpet cricket-bags lying about its seats. Two horses were at the pole, seriously bowed over their nose-bags. A swingle-tree hung at the pole's end, and a second pair of reins was fast to the driver's seat, the four cheek-buckles lying crossed over the wheeler's backs.
On a day in early spring White was ploughing and Jonas Bird, who'd gone to Four Ways Farm to measure up for a new pigs' house, took care to come home along past the field where White was at work. And he knew that at noon William's horses would have their nose-bags and the ploughman would be sitting in the hedge eating his dinner.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking