"The following afternoon we went riding. I had never been on a horse before. To me the animal smelt of the leather trade. I was surprised to find that horses are warm. I gripped the reins as if they were a life line; I was jellied and bumped by its extraordinary movement. The party began to canter and I was tossed in the air and I got a fixed smile on my face. We arrived in a field to try some jumps. A wicked old trainer shouted bits of advice. I went over one or two gaps and arrived, surprised and askew, but still up. So they tried some more difficult jumps. The party hung about waiting for the slaughter. The animal rose, I fell on its neck, but I did not come off. The stakes were raised; at the next jump the horse and I went to different parts of the sky. I was in the mud. I got up and apologized to the horse, which turned its head away. Afterwards we walked and trotted home; it seemed to take hours. Back in the house, I felt someone had put planks on my le! gs and turned my buttocks into wooden boxes. So my life as an Irish sportsman and country gentleman came to an end. Still, I had stayed with a baronet. I was snobbish enough to be pleased by that. I like curious clothes. Back in Dublin, I stayed in my riding breeches, bought at a cheap shop in Dublin, and wore them for weeks after, as an enjoyable symbol of the Irish habit of life, until someone tactfully suggested I looked like a stable boy." -- Englishman V. S. Pritchett, "Midnight Oil," 1971. Robert Kiely, "The New York Times Book Review said of this knighted literary great, "Pritchett's stories invite and merit reading, and, what is more important, they encourage us to look again at those parts of life we like to think are settled...He shows us, and, furthermore, delights us by making us believe in, the human capacity to change and, particularly, to love."