A good many may have wondered why we so suddenly quit speeding our horse
on the avenue. For two or three days we couldn't go down the avenue
enough, and there is no person but will admit that our old pile driver
trotted real spry. We did not get the idea that he was the fastest
horse that ever was, but he seemed real soon. It takes a good deal of
executive ability for a man who has a third-class horse to keep from
going down the road with horses that are too fast. One must be a good
judge, and when he finds a horse that he can beat, stick to him.
We got the thing down pretty fine, but one day a man drove along beside
us, going up, who seemed bound to get into conversation. He was a
red-faced man, with these side-bar whiskers, evidently a German. He was
driving a sorrel horse to a long sled, with a box on behind the seat,
a sort of delivery sleigh. He had a barrel in the sleigh, filled with
intestines from a slaughter house, two baskets full of the same freight,
a cow's head, and two sheep heads. He was evidently owner of a sausage
factory somewhere, and as he kept along beside us his company was
somewhat annoying. Not that we were proud, but we feared the people on
the avenue would think we were a silent partner in a sausage factory,
and that we were talking business.
The man was real entertaining in his conversation, but the load he
had was not congenial, and we were glad when the foot of the hill was
reached, so we could turn around and go down, and get away from him. We
turned and spit on our hands, and begun to pull up on the old horse,
and he began to get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about the
sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air making every nerve get
up and git.
Suddenly the nose of a sorrel horse began to work up by where we sat,
and we looked around, and may we never live to make a million dollars if
it wasn't the red-faced sausage man, intestines, cow's head, basket and
all, and his old horse was coming for all that was out. We blush for our
sex. It would look nice to get in the papers that we had been racing our
blue-blooded thoroughbred against a sausage butcher, wouldn't it? Our
plan was formed in an instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and
we took out the whip and touched our horse on a raw spot, intending to
go right away from the fertilizer.
The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, and to have his pride
touched, for he snorted and let out another link. We don't know as
anyone would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and costly steed
went, the faster that homely and cheap butcher horse climbed. People by
the hundreds all along the line were watching the race. The baskets
of sausage covets were slewing around from one side of his sled to the
other, and we expected every moment one of them would flop over into our
cutter.
Matters were becoming desperate, and we gave the horse one more cut and
went the last block at a fearful rate, but the butcher was right beside
us, so one mosquito bar would have covered us, and we came out neck and
neck, the Dutchman a little ahead because his horse was unchecked, and
the crowd yelled for the butcher. We turned to go up, when the butcher
came up alongside just as a carriage of beautiful ladies were passing,
and as they turned up their noses at his load, he said:
“Dot vas a nice race, ain't it, Mister Beck?”
We could have killed him in cold blood. Not that we dislike to be
beaten. We have always been beaten. It isn't that. But we don't want
to trot horses with no delivery wagon. We are not calculated for
associating, in the horse arena, with a load of slaughter house refuse.
It is asking too much. We are willing to race with Deacon Van Schaick,
or brother Antisdel, or Elder Hyde, or Elder Gordon, or any of those
truly good men in whom there is no guile, and in whose cutters there is
no foreign matter, but as long as reason maintains her throne we shall
never go upon the track again with a butcher.
There should be a law passed making it a penal offence for a person with
a delivery wagon to tackle onto a man who drives a thoroughbred. It is
wrong, and will lead to trouble. We have not given up racing entirely,
but hereafter we shall look the avenue over very close for butchers
before we let out our four legged telescope. A butcher is just as good
as anybody, understand us, but they must keep their distance. We
don't want to look into, the hind end of no cutter that is filled with
slaughter house ornaments, and we won't. It is not pride of birth, or
anything of that kind, but such people ought to drive on Wells street,
or have slower horses.