Buying a horse

S& 7 J

JOHNA.SEAVERNS

^SWvxqto VWnjb

>OSI_

Webster FamUy Library of Veterinary Medicine

Comrmngs School of Veterinary Medicine at

Tufts University

200 Westboro Road

Worth Grafton, MA 01636

TUFTS UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

3 9090 014 551 630

BUYING A HORSE

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 III II II

BUYING A
HORSE

BY

William Dean Howells

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge
1916

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 urn

mm nun urn i> Mr;

t

COPYRIGHT, 1S79

BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO.

COPYRIGHT, I916

BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BUYING A HORSE

BUYING A HORSE

F one has money enough, there
seems no reason why one should
not go and buy such a horse as he
wants. This is the commonly accepted
theory, on which the whole commerce in
horses is founded, and on which my friend
proceeded.

He was about removing from Charles-
bridge, where he had lived many happy
years without a horse, farther into the
country, where there were charming drives
and inconvenient distances, and where a
horse would be very desirable, if not quite
necessary. But as a horse seemed at first
an extravagant if not sinful desire, he be-
[ 3 ]

BUYING A HORSE

gan by talking vaguely round, and rather
hinting than declaring that he thought
somewhat of buying. The professor to
whom he first intimated his purpose flung
himself from his horse's back to the grassy
border of the sidewalk where my friend
stood, and said he would give him a few
points. " In the first place don't buy a
horse that shows much daylight under him,
unless you buy a horse-doctor with him ;
get a short-legged horse ; and he ought to
be short and thick in the barrel," — or
words to that effect. " Don't get a horse
with a narrow forehead : there are horse-
fools as well as the other kind, and you
want a horse with room for brains. And
look out that he 's all right forward."

" What 's that ? " asked my friend, hear-
ing this phrase for the first time.

" That he is n't tender in his fore-feet, —
that the hoof is n't contracted," said the
professor, pointing out the well-planted
foot of his own animal.
[ 4 1

BUYING A RORSE

"What ought I to pay for a horse?"
pursued my friend, struggling to fix the
points given by the professor in a mind
hitherto unused to points of the kind.

" Well, horses are cheap, now ; and yor
ought to get a fair family horse — You
want a family horse ? "

"Yes."

" Something you can ride and drive
both ? Something your children can
drive ? "

" Yes, yes."

" Well, you ought to get such a horse
as that for a hundred and twenty-five dol-
lars."

This was the figure my friend had
thought of ; he drew a breath of relief.
" Where did you buy your horse ? "

" Oh, I always get my horses " — the
plural abashed my friend — "at the Chev-
aliers'. If you throw yourself on their
mercy, they '11 treat you well. I '11 send
you a note to them."

[ 5 j

BUYING A HORSE

" Do ! " cried my friend, as the profes-
sor sprang upon his horse, and galloped
away.

My friend walked home encouraged^
his purpose of buying a horse had not
seemed so monstrous, at least to this
hardened offender. He now began to an-
nounce it more boldly ; he said right and
left that he wished to buy a horse, but
that he would not go above a hundred.
This was not true, but he wished to act
prudently, and to pay a hundred and
twenty-five only in extremity. He car-
ried the professor's note to the Chevaliers',
who duly honored it, understood at once
what my friend wanted, and said they
would look out for him. They were sorry
he had not happened in a little sooner, —
they had just sold the very horse he
wanted. I may as well say here that they
were not able to find him a horse, but
that they used him with the strictest
honor, and that short of supplying his
want they were perfect.
• [ 0 J

BUYING A HORSE

In the mean time the irregular dealers
began to descend upon him, as well as
amateurs to whom he had mentioned his
wish for a horse, and his premises at cer-
tain hours of the morning presented the
effect of a horse-fair, or say rather a mu-
seum of equine bricabrac. At first he
blushed at the spectacle, but he soon be-
came hardened to it, and liked the excite-
ment of driving one horse after another
round the block, and deciding upon him.
To a horse, they had none of the qualities
commended by the professor, but they had
many others which the dealers praised.
These persons were uot discouraged when
he refused to buy, but cheerfully returned
the next day with others differently ruin-
ous. They were men of a spirit more
obliging than my friend has found in other
walks. One of them, who paid him a pref-
atory visit in his library, in five minutes
augmented from six to seven hundred and
fifty pounds the weight of a pony-horse,
[ 7 ]

BUYING A HORSE

which he wished to sell. (" What you
want," said the Chevaliers, " is a pony-
horse," and my friend, gratefully catching
at the phrase, had gone about saying he
wanted a pony-horse. After that, hulking
brutes of from eleven to thirteen hundred
pounds were every day brought to him as
pony-horses.) The same dealer came an-
other day with a mustang, in whom was
no fault, and who had every appearance of
speed, but who was only marking time as it
is called in military drill, I believe, when
he seemed to be getting swiftly over the
ground ; he showed a sociable preference
for the curbstone in turning corners, and
was condemned, to be replaced the next
evening by a pony-horse that a child might
ride or drive, and that especcially would
not shy. Upon experiment, he shied half
across the road, and the fact was reported
to the dealer. He smiled compassionately.
" What did he shy at f "
" A wheelbarrow.' '

[ 8 J

BUYING A HORSE

" Well ! I never see the hoss yet that
would rCt shy at a wheelbarrow."

My friend owned that a wheelbarrow
was of an alarming presence, but he had
his reserves respecting the self-control and
intelligence of this pony-horse. The dealer
amiably withdrew him, and said that he
would bring next day a horse — if he
could get the owner to part with a family
pet — that would suit ; but upon investiga-
tion it appeared that this treasure was what
is called a calico-horse, and my friend, who
was without the ambition to figure in the
popular eye as a stray circus-rider, de-
clined to see him.

These adventurous spirits were not
squeamish. They thrust their hands- into
the lathery mouths of their brutes to show
the state of their teeth, and wiped their
fingers on their trousers or grass after-
wards, without a tremor, though my friend
could never forbear a shudder at the sight.
If sometimes they came with a desirable
[ 9 ]

BUYING A HORSE

animal, the price was far beyond his mod-
est figure ; but generally they seemed to
think that he did not want a desirable ani-
mal. In most cases, the pony-horse pro-
nounced sentence upon himself by some
gross and ridiculous blemish ; but some,
times my friend failed to hit upon any ten-
able excuse for refusing him. In such an
event, he would say, with an air of easy
and candid comradery, " Well, now, what 's
the matter with him ? " And then the
dealer, passing his hand down one of the
pony-horse's fore-legs, would respond, with
an upward glance of searching inquiry at
my friend, " Well, he 's a leetle mite ten-
der for'a'd."

I am afraid my friend grew to have a
cruel pleasure in forcing them to this ex-
posure of the truth ; but he excused him-
self upon the ground that they never ex^
pected him to be alarmed at this tenderness
forward, and that their truth was not a
tribute to virtue, but was contempt of his
[ 10 ]

BUYING A HORSE

ignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth ;
and he felt that it must be his part there-
after to confute the common belief that
there is no truth in horse-trades.

These people were not usually the own-
ers of the horses they brought, but the
emissaries or agents of the owners. Often
they came merely to show a horse, and
were not at all sure that his owner would
part with him on any terms, as he was a
favorite with the ladies of the family. An
impenetrable mystery hung about the own-
er, through which he sometimes dimly
loomed as a gentleman in failing health,
who had to give up his daily drives, and
had no use for the horse. There were
cases in which the dealer came secretly,
from pure zeal, to show a horse whose
owner supposed him still in the stable, and
who must be taken back before his ab-
sence was noticed. If my friend insisted
upon knowing the owner and conferring
with him, in any of these instances, it was
[ 11 1

BUYING A HORSE

darkly admitted that he was a gentleman
in the livery business over in Somerville
or down in the Lower Port. Truth, it
seemed, might be absent or present in a
horse-trade, but mystery was essential.

The dealers had a jargon of their own,
in which my friend became an expert.
They did not say that a horse weighed a
thousand pounds, but ten hundred ; he
was not worth a hundred and twenty-five
dollars, but one and a quarter ; he was not
going on seven years old, but was coming
seven. There are curious facts, by the
way, in regard to the age of horses which
are not generally known. A horse is
never of an even age : that is, he is not
six, or eight, or ten, but five, or seven, or
nine years old ; he is sometimes, but not
often, eleven ; he is never thirteen ; his
favorite time of life is seven, and he rarely
gets beyond it, if on sale. My friend found
the number of horses brought into the
world in 1871 quite beyond computation.
[ vi ]

BUYING A HORSE

}fe also found that most hard-working
horses were sick or ailing, as most hard-
working men and women are ; that per-
fectly sound horses are as rare as perfectly
sound human beings, and are apt, like the
latter, to be vicious.

He began to have a quick eye for the
characteristics of horses, and could walk
round a proffered animal and scan his
points with the best. " What," he would
ask, of a given beast, " makes him let his
lower lip hang down in that imbecile man-
ner ? "

" Oh, he 's got a parrot-mouth. Some
folks like 'em." Here the dealer would
pull open the creature's flabby lips, and
discover a beak like that of a polyp ; and
the cleansing process on the grass or trou-
sers would take place.

Of another. " What makes him trot in
that spread-out, squatty way, behind ? " he
demanded, after the usual tour of the
block.

[ 13 ]

BUYING A HORSE

" He travels wide. Horse men prefer
that."

They preferred any ugliness or awk-
wardness in a horse to the opposite grace
or charm, and all that my friend could
urge, in meek withdrawal from negotia-
tion, was that he was not of an educated
taste. In the course of long talks, which
frequently took the form of warnings, he
became wise in the tricks practiced by all
dealers except his interlocutor. One of
these, a device for restoring youth to an
animal nearing the dangerous limit of
eleven, struck him as peculiarly ingenious.
You pierce the forehead, and blow into it
with a quill ; this gives an agreeable full-
ness, and erects the drooping ears in a
spirited and mettlesome manner, so that a
horse coming eleven will look for a time
as if he were coming five.

After a thorough course of the volunteer
dealers, and after haunting the Chevaliers'
stables for several weeks, my friend found

r 14 i

BUYING A HORSE

that not money alone was needed to buy a
horse. The affair began to wear a sinister
aspect. He had an uneasy fear that in sev-
eral cases he had refused the very horse he
wanted with the aploirib he had acquired in
dismissing undesirable beasts. The fact
was he knew less about horses than when
he began to buy, while he had indefinitely
enlarged his idle knowledge of men, of
their fatuity and hollowness. He learned
that men whom he had always envied their
brilliant omniscience in regard to horses,
as they drove him out behind their dash-
ing trotters, were quite ignorant and help-
less in the art of buying ; they always got
somebody else to buy their horses for
them. " Find a man you can trust," they
said, " and then put yourself in his hands.
And never trust anybody about the health
of a horse. Take him to a veterinary sur-
geon, and have him go all over him."

My friend grew sardonic ; then he grew
melancholy and haggard. There was some-
[ 15 ]

BUYING A HORSE

thing very straDge in the fact that a person
unattainted of crime, and not morally dis-
abled in any known way, could not take
his money and buy such a horse as he
wanted with it. His acquaintance began
to recommend men to him. " If you want
a horse, Captain Jenks is your man."
" Why don't you go to Major Snaffle ?
He 'd take pleasure in it." But my friend,
naturally reluctant to trouble others, and
sickened by long failure, as well as mad-
dened by the absurdity that if you wanted
a horse you must first get a man, neglected
this really good advice. He lost his inter-
est in the business, and dismissed with
lack-lustre indifference the horses which
continued to be brought to his gate. He
felt that his position before the community
was becoming notorious and ridiculous.
He slept badly ; his long endeavor for a
horse ended in nightmares.

One day he said to a gentleman whose
turn-out he had long admired, " I wonder
if you could n't find me a horse ! "
[ 16 ]

BUYING A HORSE

" Want a horse ? "

" Want a horse ! I thought my need
was known beyond the sun. I thought my
want of a horse was branded on my fore-
head."

This gentleman laughed, and then he
said, " I 've just seen a mare that would
suit you. I thought of buying her, but I
want a match, and this mare is too small.
She '11 be round here in fifteen minutes,
and I '11 take you out with her. Can you
wait?"

" Wait ! " My friend laughed in his
turn.

The mare dashed up before the fifteen
minutes had passed. She was beautiful,
black as a coal ; and kind as a kitten, said
her driver. My friend thought her head
was rather big. " Why, yes, she 's a pony-
horse ; that 's what I like about her.'*

She trotted off wonderfully, and my
friend felt that the thing was now done.

The gentleman, who was driving, laid
[ 17 1

BUYING A HORSE

his head on one side, and listened. " Clicks,
don't she ? "

" She does click," said my friend oblig-
ingly.

" Hear it ? " asked the gentleman.

" Well, if you ask me," said my friend,
" I don't hear it. What is clicking? "

" Oh, striking the heel of her fore-foot
with the toe of her hind-foot. Sometimes
it comes from bad shoeing. Some people
like it. I don't myself/' After a while
he added, " If you can get this mare for a
hundred and twenty-five, you 'd better buy
her."

"Well, I will," said my friend. He
would have bought her, in fact, if she had
clicked like a noiseless sewing-machine.
But the owner, remote as Medford, and in-
visibly dealing, as usual, through a third
person, would not sell her for one and a
quarter ; he wanted one and a half. Be-
sides, another Party was trying to get her ;
and now ensued a negotiation which for
[ 18 ]

BUYING A HORSE

intricacy and mystery surpassed all the
others. It was conducted in my friend's
interest by one who had the difficult task
of keeping the owner's imagination in
check and his demands within bounds, for
it soon appeared that he wanted even more
than one and a half for her. Unseen and
inaccessible, he grew every day more un-
manageable. He entered into relations
with the other Party, and it all ended in
his sending her out one day after my friend
had gone into the country, and requiring
him to say at once that he would give one
and a half. He was not at home, and he
never saw the little mare again. This con-
firmed him in the belief that she was the
very horse he ought to have had.

People had now begun to say to him,
" Why don't you advertise ? Advertise for
a gentleman's pony-horse and phaeton and
harness complete. You '11 have a perfect
procession of them before night." This
proved true. His advertisement, mystically
[ 19 ]

BUYING A HORSE

worded after the fashion of those things,
found abundant response. But the estab-
lishments which he would have taken he
could not get at the figure he had set, and
those which his money would buy he would
not have. They came at all hours of the
day ; and he never returned home after an
an absence without meeting the reproach
that now the very horse he wanted had
just been driven away, and would not be
brought back, as his owner lived in Biller-
ica, and only happened to be down. A
few equipages really appeared desirable,
but in regard to these his jaded faculties
refused to work : he could decide nothing ;
his volition was extinct ; he let them come
and go.

It was at this period that people who had
at first been surprised that he wished to buy
a horse came to believe that he had bought
one, and were astonished to learn that he
had not. He felt the pressure of public
opinion.

[ 20 1

BUYING A HORSE

He began to haunt the different sale-sta-
bles in town, and to look at horses with a
view to buying at private sale. Every fa-
cility for testing them was offered him, but
he could not make up his mind. In feeble
wantonness he gave appointments which
he knew he should not keep, and, passing
his days in an agony of multitudinous inde-
cision, he added to the lies in the world the
hideous sum of his broken engagements.
From time to time he forlornly appeared
at the Chevaliers', and refreshed his cor-
rupted nature by contact with their sterling
integrity. Once he ventured into their
establishment just before an auction began,
and remained dazzled by the splendor of a
spectacle which I fancy can be paralleled
only by some dream of a mediaeval tourna-
ment. The horses, brilliantly harnessed,
accurately shod, and standing tall on bur-
nished hooves, their necks curved by the
check rein and their black and blonde
manes flowing over the proud arch, lustrous

[ 21 ]

BUYING A HORSE

and wrinkled like satin, were ranged in a
glittering hemicycle. They affected my
friend like the youth and beauty of his ear-
liest evening parties ; he experienced a
sense of bashfulness, of sickening personal
demerit. He could not have had the au-
dacity to bid on one of those superb creat-
ures, if all the Chevaliers together had
whispered him that here at last was the
very horse.

I pass over an unprofitable interval in
which he abandoned himself to despair, and
really gave up the hope of being able ever
to buy a horse. During this interval he
removed from Charlesbridge to the coun-
try, and found himself, to his self-scorn and
self-pity, actually reduced to hiring a livery
horse by the day. But relief was at hand.
The carpenter who had remained to finish
up the new house after my friend had gone
into it bethought himself of a firm in his
place who brought on horses from the
West, and had the practice of selling a
[ 22 ]

BUYING A HORSE

horse on trial, and constantly replacing it
with other horses till the purchaser was
suited. This seemed an ideal arrangement,
and the carpenter said that he thought they
had the very horse my friend wanted.

The next day he drove him up, and upon
the plan of successive exchanges till the
perfect horse was reached, my friend
bought him for one and a quarter, the fig-
ure which he had kept in mind from the
first. He bought a phaeton and harness
from the same people, and when the whole
equipage stood at his door, he felt the long-
delayed thrill of pride and satisfaction.
The horse was of the Morgan breed, a
bright bay, small and round and neat, with
a little head tossed high, and a gentle yet
alert movement. He was in the prime of
youth, of the age of which every horse de-
sires to be, and was just coming seven.
My friend had already taken him to a
horse-doctor, who for one dollar had gone
all over him, and pronounced him sound as
[ 23 ]

BUYING A HOESE

a fish, and complimented his new owner
upon his acquisition. It all seemed too
good to be true. As Billy turned his soft
eye on the admiring family group, and suf-
fered one of the children to smooth his
nose while another held a lump of sugar to
his dainty lips, his amiable behavior restored
my friend to his peace of mind and his long-
lost faith in a world of reason.

The ridiculous planet, wavering bat-like
through space, on which it had been im-
possible for an innocent man to buy a suit-
able horse was a dream of the past, and he
had the solid, sensible old earth under his
feet once more. He mounted into the phae-
ton and drove off with his wife; he re-
turned and gave each of the children a drive
in succession. He told them that any of
them could drive Billy as much as they
liked, and he quieted a clamor for exclu-
sive ownership on the part of each by de-
claring that Billy belonged to the whole
family. To this day he cannot look back
[ 24 ]

BUYING A HORSE

to those moments without tenderness. If
Billy had any apparent fault, it was an
amiable indolence. But this made him all
the safer for the children, and it did not
really amount to laziness. While on sale
he had been driven in a provision cart, and
had therefore the habit of standing un-
hitched. One had merely to fling the reins
into the bottom of the phaeton and leave
Billy to his own custody. His other habit
of drawing up at kitchen gates was not con-
firmed, and the fact that he stumbled on his
way to the doctor who pronounced him
blameless was reasonably attributed to a
loose stone at the foot of the hill ; the mis-
step resulted in a barked shin, but a little
wheel-grease, in a horse of Billy's com-
plexion, easily removed the evidence of
this.

It was natural that after Billy was

bought and paid for, several extremely

desirable horses should be offered to my

friend by their owners, who came in person,

[ 25 ]

BUYING A HORSE

stripped of all the adventitious mystery of
agents and middle-men. They were gen-
tlemen, and they spoke the English habit-
ual with persons not corrupted by horses.
My friend saw them come and go with
grief ; for he did not like to be shaken in
his belief that Billy was the only horse in
the world for him, and he would have liked
to purchase their animals, if only to show
his appreciation of honor and frankness and
sane language. Yet he was consoled by
the possession of Billy, whom he found in-
creasingly excellent and trustworthy. Any
of the family drove him about ; he stood
unhitched ; he was not afraid of cars ; he
was as kind as a kitten ; he had not, as the
neighboring coachman said, a voice, though
he seemed a little loively in coming out of
the stable sometimes. He went well un-
der the saddle ; he was a beauty, and if he
had a voice, it was too great satisfaction in
his personal appearance.

One evening after tea, the young gentle-
[ 26 J

BUYING A HORSE

man, who was about to drive Billy out,
stung by the reflection that he had not
taken blackberries and cream twice, ran
into the house to repair the omission, and
left Billy, as usual, unhitched at the door.
During his absence, Billy caught sight of
his stable, and involuntarily moved towards
it. Finding himself unchecked, he gently
increased his pace ; and when my friend
looking up from the melon-patch which
he was admiring, called out, " Ho, Billy f
Whoa, Billy ! " and headed him off from
the gap, Billy profited by the circumstance
to turn into the pear orchard. The elastic
turf under his unguided hoof seemed to
exhilarate him ; his pace became a trot, a
canter, a gallop, a tornado ; the reins flut-
tered like ribbons in the air ; the phaeton
flew ruining after. In a terrible cyclone
the equipage swept round the neighbor's
house, vanished, reappeared, swooped down
his lawn, and vanished again. It was in-
credible.

[ 27 1

BUYING A HORSE

My friend stood transfixed among his
melons. He knew that his neighbor's
children played under the porte-cochere
on the other side of the house which Billy
had just surrounded in his flight, and prob-
ably .... My friend's first impulse was
not to go and see, but to walk into his
own house, and ignore the whole affair.
But you cannot really ignore an affair of
that kind. You must face it, and com-
monly it stares you out of countenance.
Commonly, too, it knows how to choose
its time so as to disgrace as well as crush
its victim. His neighbor had people to
tea, and long before my friend reached
the house the host and his guests were all
out on the lawn, having taken the precau-
tion to bring their napkins with them.

" The children ! " gasped my friend.

"Oh, they were all in bed," said the
neighbor, and he began to laugh. That
was right ; my friend would have mocked
at the calamity if it had been his neigh-

[ 28 J

BUYING A HORSE

bor's. c< Let us go and look up your pha-
eton." He put his hand on the naked
flank of a fine young elm, from which the
bark had just been stripped. " Billy seems
to have passed this way."

At the foot of a stone-wall four feet
high lay the phaeton, with three wheels
in the air, and the fourth crushed flat
against the axle ; the willow back was
broken, the shafts were pulled out, and
Billy was gone.

" Good thing there was nobody in it,"
said the neighbor.

" Good thing it did n't run down some
Irish family, and get you in for damages,"
said a guest.

It appeared, then, that there were two
good things about this disaster. My friend
had not thought there were so many, but
while he rejoiced in this fact, he rebelled
at the notion that a sorrow like that ren-
dered the sufferer in any event liable for
damages, aDd he resolved that he never
[ 29 ]

BUYING A HORSE

would have paid them. But probably he
would.

Some half-grown boys got the phaeton
right-side up, and restored its shafts and
cushions, and it limped away with them
towards the carriage-house. Presently an-
other half-grown boy came riding Billy up
the hill. Billy showed an inflated nostril
and an excited eye, but physically he was
unharmed, save for a slight scratch on
what was described as the off hind-leg;
the reader may choose which leg this was.

" The worst of it is," said the guest,
" that you never can trust 'em after they 've
run off once."

" Have some tea ? " said the host to my
friend.

" No, thank you," said my friend, in
whose heart the worst of it rankled ; and
he walked home embittered by his guilty
consciousness that Billy ought never to
have been left untied. But it was not
this self-reproach; it was not the muti-
[ 30 1

BUYING A HORSE

lated phaeton ; it was not the loss of
Billy, who must now be sold ; it was the
wreck of settled hopes, the renewed sus-
pense of faith, the repetition of the trag-
ical farce of buying another horse, that
most grieved my friend.

Billy's former owners made a feint of
supplying other horses in his place, but
the only horse supplied was an aged vet-
eran with the scratches, who must have
come seven early in our era, and who,
from his habit of getting about on tip-
toe, must have been tender forVd beyond
anything of my friend's previous experi-
ence. Probably if he could have waited
they might have replaced Billy in time,
but their next installment from the West
produced nothing suited to his wants but
a horse with the presence and carriage of
a pig, and he preferred to let them sell
Billy for what he would bring, and to
trust his fate elsewhere. Billy had fallen
nearly one half in value, and he brought
[ 31 ]

BUYING A HORSE

very little — to his owner ; though the
new purchaser was afterwards reported to
value him at much more than what my
friend had paid for him. These things
are really mysteries ; you cannot fathom
them; it is idle to try. My friend re-
mained grieving over his own folly and
carelessness, with a fond hankering for
the poor little horse he had lost, and the
belief that he should never find such an-
other. Yet he was not without a philan-
thropist's consolation. He had added to
the stock of harmless pleasures in a de-
gree of which he could not have dreamed.
All his acquaintance knew that he had
bought a horse, and they all seemed now
to conspire in asking him how he got on
with it. He was forced to confess the
truth. On hearing it, his friends burst
into shouts of laughter, and smote their
persons, and stayed themselves against
lamp-posts and house-walls. They begged
his pardon, and then they began again,
[ 32 ]

BUYING A HORSE

and shouted and roared anew. Since the

gale which blew down the poet 's

chimneys and put him to the expense of
rebuilding them, no joke so generally satis-
factory had been offered to the community.
My friend had, in his time, achieved the
reputation of a wit by going about and
and saying , " Did you know 's chim-
neys had blown down ? " and he had now
himself the pleasure of causing the like
quality of wit in others.

Having abandoned the hope of getting
anything out of the people who had sold
him Billy, he was for a time the prey of
an inert despair, in which he had not even
spirit to repine at the disorder of a uni-
verse in which he could not find a horse.
No horses were now offered to him, for it
had become known throughout the trade
that he had bought a horse. He had
therefore to set about counteracting this
impression with what feeble powers were
left him. Of the facts of that period he
[ 33 ]

BUYING A HORSE

remembers with confusion and remorse the
trouble to which he put the owner of the
pony-horse Pansy, whom he visited re-
peatedly in a neighboring town, at a loss
of time and money to himself, and with no
result but to embarrass Pansy's owner in
his relations with people who had hired
him and did not wish him sold. Some-
thing of the old baffling mystery hung over
Pansy's whereabouts ; he was with diffi-
culty produced, and when en evidence he
was not the Pansy my friend had expected.
He paltered with his regrets ; he covered
his disappointment with what pretenses ha
could ; and he waited till he could tele-
graph back his adverse decision. His con-
clusion was that, next to proposing mar-
riage, there was no transaction of life that
involved so many delicate and complex re-
lations as buying a horse, and that the
rupture of a horse-trade was little less em-
barrassing and distressing to all concerned
than a broken engagement. There was a
[ 34 ]

BUYING A HORSE

terrible intimacy in the affair ; it was
alarmingly personal. He went about sor-
rowing for the pain and disappointment he
had inflicted on many amiable people of
all degrees who had tried to supply him
with a horse.

" Look here," said his neighbor, finding
him in this low state, " why don't you get
a horse of the gentleman who furnishes
mine ? " This had been suggested before,
and my friend explained that he had dis-
liked to make trouble. His scruples were
lightly set aside, and he suffered himself to
be entreated. The fact was he was so dis-
couraged with his attempt to buy a horse
that if any one had now given him such a
horse as he wanted he would have taken it.

One sunny, breezy morning his neigh-
bor drove my friend over to the beautiful
farm of the good genius on whose kindly
offices he had now fixed his languid hopes.
I need not say what the landscape was in
mid- August, or how, as they drew near the
[ 35 }

BUYING A HORSE

farm, the air was enriched with the breath
of vast orchards of early apples, — apples
that no forced fingers rude shatter from
their stems, but that ripen and mellow un-
touched, till they drop into the straw with
which the orchard aisles are bedded ; it is
the poetry of horticulture ; it is Art prac-
ticing the wise and gracious patience of
Nature, and offering to the Market a Sum-
mer Sweeting of the Hesperides.

The possessor of this luscious realm at
once took my friend's case into considera-
tion ; he listened, the owner of a hundred
horses, with gentle indulgence to the shape-
less desires of a man whose wildest dream
was one horse. At the end he said, " I see
you want a horse that can take care of
himself."

"No," replied my friend, with the in-
spiration of despair. "I want a horse
that can take care of me."

The good genius laughed, and turned
the conversation. Neither he nor my
[ 36 ]

BUYING A HORSE

friend's neighbor was a man of many-
words, and like taciturn people they talked
in low tones. The three moved about the
room and looked at the Hispano-Roman
pictures ; they had a glass of sherry ; from
time to time something was casually mur-
mured about Frank. My friend felt that
he was in good hands, and left the affair
to them. It ended in a visit to the stable,
where it appeared that this gentleman
had no horse to sell among his hundred
which exactly met my friend's want, but
that he proposed to lend him Frank while
a certain other animal was put in training
for the difficult office he required of a
horse. One of the men was sent for
Frank, and in the mean time my friend
was shown some gaunt and graceful thor-
oughbreds, and taught to see the difference
between them and the plebeian horse.
But Frank, though no thoroughbred,
eclipsed these patricians when he came.
He had a little head, and a neck gallantly
[ 37 ]

BUYING A HORSE

arched; he was black and plump and
smooth, and though he carried himself
with a petted air, and was a dandy to the
tips of his hooves, his knowing eye was
kindly. He turned it upon my friend
with the effect of understanding his case at
a glance.

It was in this way that for the rest of
the long, lovely summer peace was re-
established in his heart. There was no
question of buying or selling Frank ; there
were associations that endeared him be-
yond money to his owner ; but my friend
could take him without price. The situa-
tion had its humiliation for a man who had
been arrogantly trying to buy a horse, but
he submitted with grateful meekness, and
with what grace Heaven granted him ;
and Frank gayly entered upon the pecul-
iar duties of his position. His first duty
was to upset all preconceived notions of
the advantage of youth in a horse. Frank
was not merely not coming seven or nine,

r ss i

BUYING A HORSE

but his age was an even number, — he was
sixteen ; and it was his owner's theory,
which Frank supported, that if a horse was
well used he was a good horse till twenty-
five.

The truth is that Frank looked like a
young horse ; he was a dandy without any
of the ghastliness which attends the preser-
vation of youth in old beaux of another
species. When my friend drove him in
the rehabilitated phaeton he felt that the
turn-out was stylish, and he learned to
consult certain eccentricities of Frank's in
the satisfaction of his pride. One of these
was a high reluctance to be passed on the
road. Frank was as lazy a horse — but
lazy in a self-respectful, aesthetic way — as
ever was ; yet if he heard a vehicle at no
matter how great distance behind him (and
he always heard it before his driver), he
brightened with resolution and defiance,
and struck out with speed that made com-
petition difficult. If my friend found that
[ 39 ]

BUYING A HORSE

the horse behind was likely to pass Frank,
he made a merit of holding him in. If
they met a team, he lay back in his phae-
ton, and affected not to care to be going
faster than a walk, any way.

One of the things for which he chiefly
prized Frank was his skill in backing and
turning. He is one of those men who be-
come greatly perturbed when required to
back and turn a vehicle; he cannot tell
(till too late) whether he ought to pull the
right rein in order to back to the left, or
vice versa; he knows, indeed, the princi-
ple, but he becomes paralyzed in its appli-
cation. Frank never was embarrassed,
never confused. My friend had but to
say, " Back, Frank ! " and Frank knew
from the nature of the ground how far to
back and which way to turn. He has
thus extricated my friend from positions in
which it appeared to him that no earthly
power could relieve him.

In going up hill Frank knew just when
[ 40 ]

BUYING A HORSE

to give himself a rest, and at what moment
to join the party in looking about and en-
joying the prospect. He was also an adept
in scratching off flies, and had a precision
in reaching an insect anywhere in his van
with one of his rear hooves which few of
us attain in slapping mosquitoes. This ac-
tion sometimes disquieted persons in the
phaeton, but Frank knew perfectly well
what he was about, and if harm had hap-
pened to the people under his charge my
friend was sure that Frank could have
done anything short of applying arnica
and telegraphing to their friends. His
varied knowledge of life and his long ex-
perience had satisfied him that there were
very few things to be afraid of in this
world. Such womanish weaknesses as shy-
ing and starting were far from him, and he
regarded the boisterous behavior of loco-
motives with indifference. He had not,
indeed, the virtue of one horse offered to my
friend's purchase, of standing, unmoved,
[ 41 ]

BUYING A HORSE

with his nose against a passing express
train ; but he was certainly not afraid of
the cars.

Frank was by no means what Mr. Em-
erson calls a mush of concession ; he was
not merely amianle ; he had his moments
of self-assertion, his touches of asperity.
It was not safe to pat his nose, like the
erring Billy's ; he was apt to bring his
handsome teeth together in proximity to
the caressing hand with a sharp click and
a sarcastic grin. Not that he ever did, or
ever would really bite. So, too, when left
to stand long under fly-haunted cover, he
he would start off afterwards with alarm-
ing vehemence ; and he objected to the
saddle. On the only occasion when any
of my friend's family mounted him, he
trotted gayly over the grass towards the
house, with the young gentleman on his
back ; then, without warning, he stopped
short, a slight tremor appeared to pass
over him, and his rider continued the ex-

[ 42 ]

BUYING A HORSE

cursion some ten feet farther, alighting
lump-wise on a bunch of soft turf which
Frank had selected for his reception.

The summer passed, and in the comfort
of Frank's possession my friend had al-
most abandoned the idea of ever returning
him to his owner. He had thoughts of
making the loan permanent, as something
on the whole preferable to a purchase.
The drives continued quite into December,
over roads as smooth and hard as any in
June, and the air was delicious. The first
snow brought the suggestion of sleighing ;
but that cold weather about Christmas dis-
persed these gay thoughts, and restored
my friend to virtue. Word came from the
stable that Frank's legs were swelling
from standing so long without going out,
and my friend resolved to part with an
animal for which he had no use. I do not
praise him for this ; it was no more than
his duty ; but I record his action in order
to account for the fact that he is again
. t 43 1

BUYING A HORSE

without a horse, and now, with the open-
ing of the fine weather, is beginning once
more to think of buying one.

But he is in no mood of arrogant con-
fidence. He has satisfied himself that
neither love nor money is alone adequate
to the acquisition : the fates also must
favor it. The horse which Frank's owner
has had in training may or may not be
just the horse he wants. He does not
know ; he humbly waits ; and he trembles
at the alternative of horses, mystically
summoned from space, and multitudin-
ously advancing upon him, parrot-mouthed,
pony-gaited, tender forVd, and traveling
wide behind.

[ FINIS ]

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine
School of Veterinary Medicine at

Tufts University

200 Westboro Road

(totn Grafton, MA 01636