I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he saw it, he surrendered.

He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter, which had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me alternately of the clattering shake of the great earthquake, and the sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm.
And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to pronounce a left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the American saddle.
There is no seat to speak of about it--one might as well sit in a shovel -- and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental nuisance.

If I were to write down here all the abuse I expended on those stirrups, it would make a large book, even without pictures.

Sometimes I got one foot so far through, that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimes both feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and sometimes my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly dangling about my shins.

Even when I was in proper position and carefully balanced upon the balls of my feet, there was no comfort in it, on account of my nervous dread that they were going to slip one way or the other in a moment.