In two months' time I made him master of anything I wrote to him; and as he delighted in it, he wrote a great deal himself, so that we kept an epistolary correspondence, and he would set down all the common occurrences of the day, as what he heard and saw, with his remarks on divers things.
One day, as the king and I were walking in the gardens, and talking of the customs of my country, and about our wars, telling him how our soldiers fought on horseback, the king could not conceive what I meant by a horse. I told him my wife had said there were neither beasts nor fishes in the country; which I was very much surprised at, considering how we abounded with both: "And therefore," says I, "to tell your majesty that a horse is a creature with four legs, you must naturally believe it to be somewhat like a man with four legs."--"Why, truly," says he, "I believe it is; but has it the graundee?" I could not forbear smiling, even at his majesty, and wanted to find some similitude to compare it to, to carry the king's mind that way; for else he would sooner, I thought, conceive it like a tree or a mountain than what it really was; and as I was musing, it came into my head I had given Lasmeel a small print of a horse, which I found in one of the captain's pockets at Graundevolet, and believing it to be the stamp of a tobacco-paper, had kept it to please the children with; so I told the king I believed I could show him the figure of a horse. He told me it would much oblige him.
Seeing several of the guards waiting at the garden arch, I looked, and at last found one of Lasmeel's leaves in the garden, and cutting one of them up with my knife, I took the point of that, and wrote to Lasmeel to send me by the bearer the picture of a horse I gave him, that I might show it the king. And calling one of the guards, "Carry that to Lasmeel," says I; "he is, I believe, in my apartment, and bring me an answer directly." Then falling into discourse again with the king, and presently turning at the end of the walk, I saw the same guard again. Says I "You cannot have brought me an answer already."--"You have not told me," says he, "what to bring you an answer to."--"Nor shall I," says I; "do as you are bid;" for I perceived then what the fellow stuck at. He walked off with the leaf, but very discontentedly. The king said he wondered how I could act such a contradiction. "This, father," says he, "is not what I expected from you; to order a man to bring an answer without giving him a message." I desired his patience only till the man came back. Presently says the king, "Here he comes!--Well," says he, "what answer?"--"Sir," says the fellow, "I have only had the walk for my pains: for he sent it back again, and a little white thing with it."--"Ha, ha!" says the king, "I thought so.--Come, father, own you have once been in the wrong; for I am sure you intended to give him a message, but having forgot it, would not submit to be told of your mistake by a guard." I looked very grave, reading what Lasmeel had wrote; which was to tell me he had obeyed my orders by sending the horse, for he was just then drawing it out upon a leaf.