When Black Beauty was still a colt, her mother called to her, and spoke to her.
"Pay attention," mother said, "to what I tell you: The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are cart-horse colts, and of course they have not learned manners. You have been well-bred and well-born; your father has a great name in these parts, and your grandfather won the cup two years at the Newmarket races; your grandmother had the sweetest temper of any horse I ever knew, and I think you have never seen me kick or bite. I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play. . . ."
They were words the horse was never to forget, no matter how far from that meadow the trail of her life led her -- and it led her very, ver far indeed.