Black Beauty
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Black Beauty, The autobiography of a horse by Anna Sewell. Illustrated by Wesley Dennis. Introduction by May Lamberton Becker, Cleveland and new york the world Publishing Company. Introduction. How this book came to be written by May Lamberton Becker. When Anna Sewell was a young girl, she slipped while running, hurt her ankle and never walked comfortably again. The schools lived in Yorkshire, in the north of England. A Quaker family with very little money, loved and respected by the neighborhood because they had all the qualities that make good neighbors. There were a good many Children and their mother who taught them at home needed money to buy school books. So she wrote stories and words of one syllable for little folks who liked them so well that the small books became Children's bestsellers in a way anna's lameness had its ups and downs. Sometimes she could not walk at all. Sometimes she could go on crutches. In her twenties she could even travel abroad in a year and a famous health resort. So helped that for a while she could really get around. People always liked her the better they knew her, the more they did she was good to look at. Her eyes were large and kind, and she wore her hair in the pretty fashion of the time, parted in the middle and framing her face with clusters and long curls. The face they framed was thin, but you did not notice that when she smiled. Whether she could walk or not she never lost her courage or her love for horses. Sometimes she could ride horseback, and almost always she could drive. She used to drive her father to his work 10 miles away in a light pony chase. Her friends wondered at her way of driving, for she never touched the whip, or even slapped the reins on the ponies back to her in, but talked to him as a friend, and whether he interested the words or not, he always caught the idea in her soft voice and gentle, Quaker speech. She would say, Now these shouldn't walk up this hill, don't they see how it rains, or now they must go a little faster. They would be sorry for us to be late at the station, and the pony would toss his head, pick up his feet and try faster. All horses understood her, I suppose because she understood them. So when her lameness returned and she had to spend the last seven years of her life indoors, it was natural that as she lay quiet she should think that a great deal about the hard times horses had, when people did not understand them, or for that matter, care about them at all. She thought, suppose the horse could tell his own story, wouldn't people really pay attention. Then she began to ride as easily as if she were talking, and as simply as a good horse would talk if it had the chance, and Black Beauty told his own story to the world