CATCHING THE BAY MARE.
It may be a lack of education on our part, but we confess to a dislike for
horse-races. We never attended but three; the first in our boyhood, the
second at a country fair, where we were deceived as to what would
transpire, the third last Sabbath morning. We see our friends flush with
indignation at this last admission; but let them wait a moment before they
launch their verdict.
Our horse was in the pasture-field. It was almost time to start for church,
and we needed the animal harnessed. The boy came in saying it was
impossible to catch the bay mare, and calling for our assistance. We had on
our best clothes, and did not feel like exposing ourself to rough usage;
but we vaulted the fence with pail of water in hand, expecting to try the
effect of rewards rather than punishments. The horse came out generously to
meet us. We said to the boy, "She is very tame. Strange you cannot catch
her." She came near enough to cautiously smell the pail, when she suddenly
changed her mind, and with one wild snort dashed off to the other end of
the field.
Whether she was not thirsty, or was critical of the manner of presentation,
or had apprehensions of our motive, or was seized with desire for exercise
in the open air, she gave us no chance to guess. We resolved upon more
caution of advance and gentler voice, and so laboriously approached her;
for though a pail of water is light for a little way, it gets heavy after
you have gone a considerable distance, though its contents be half spilled
away.
This time we succeeded in getting her nose inserted into the bright
beverage. We called her by pet names, addressing her as "Poor Dolly!" not
wishing to suggest any pauperism by that term, but only sympathy for the
sorrows of the brute creation, and told her that she was the finest horse
that ever was. It seemed to take well. Flattery always does--with horses.
We felt that the time had come for us to produce the rope halter, which
with our left hand we had all the while kept secreted behind our back. We
put it over her neck, when the beast wheeled, and we seized her by the
point where the copy-books say we ought to take Time, namely, the forelock.
But we had poor luck. We ceased all caressing tone, and changed the
subjunctive mood for the imperative. There never was a greater divergence
of sentiment than at that instant between us and the bay mare. She pulled
one way, we pulled the other. Turning her back upon us, she ejaculated into
the air two shining horse-shoes, both the shape of the letter O, the one
interjection in contempt for the ministry, and the other in contempt for
the press.
But catch the horse we must, for we were bound to be at church, though jute
then we did not feel at all devotional. We resolved, therefore, with the
boy, to run her down; so, by the way of making an animated start, we slung
the pail at the horse's head, and put out on a Sunday morning horse-race.
Every time she stood at the other end of the field waiting for us to come
up. She trotted, galloped and careered about us, with an occasional neigh
cheerfully given to encourage us in the pursuit. We were getting more
unprepared in body, mind and soul for the sanctuary. Meanwhile, quite a
household audience lined the fence; the children and visitors shouting like
excited Romans in an amphitheatre at a contest with wild beasts, and it
was uncertain whether the audience was in sympathy with us or the bay mare.
At this unhappy juncture, she who some years ago took us for "better or for
worse" came to the rescue, finding us in the latter condition. She advanced
to the field with a wash-basin full of water, offering that as sole
inducement, and gave one call, when the horse went out to meet her, and
under a hand, not half as strong as ours, gripping the mane, the refractory
beast was led to the manger.
Standing with our feet in the damp grass and our new clothes wet to a sop,
we learned then and there how much depends on the way you do a thing. The
proposition we made to the bay mare was far better than that offered by our
companion; but ours failed and hers succeeded. Not the first nor the last
time that a wash-basin has beaten a pail. So some of us go all through life
clumsily coaxing and awkwardly pursuing things which we want to halter and
control. We strain every nerve, only to find ourselves befooled and left
far behind, while some Christian man or woman comes into the field, and by
easy art captures that which evaded us.
We heard a good sermon that day, but it was no more impressive than the
besweated lesson of the pasture-field, which taught us that no more depends
upon the thing you do than upon the way you do it. The difference between
the clean swath of that harvester in front of our house and the ragged work
of his neighbor is in the way he swings the scythe, and not in the scythe
itself. There are ten men with one talent apiece who do more good than the
one man with ten talents. A basin properly lifted may accomplish more than
a pail unskillfully swung. A minister for an hour in his sermon attempts to
chase down those brutish in their habits, attempting to fetch them under
the harness of Christian restraint, and perhaps miserably fails, when some
gentle hand of sisterly or motherly affection laid upon the wayward one
brings him safely in.
There is a knack in doing things. If all those who plough in State and
Church had known how to hold the handles, and turn a straight furrow, and
stop the team at the end of the tiled, the world would long ago have been
ploughed into an Eden. What many people want is gumption--a word as yet
undefined; but if you do not know what it means, it is very certain you do
not possess the quality it describes. We all need to study Christian tact.
The boys in the Baskinridge school-house laughed at William L. Dayton's
impediment of speech, but that did not hinder him from afterward making
court-room and senate-chamber thrill under the spell of his words.
In our early home there was a vicious cat that would invade the milk-pans,
and we, the boys, chased her with hoes and rakes, always hitting the place
where she had been just before, till one day father came out with a plain
stick of oven-wood, and with one little clip back of the ear put an end to
all of her nine lives. You see everything depends upon the style of the
stroke, and not upon the elaborateness of the weapon. The most valuable
things you try to take will behave like the bay mare; but what you cannot
overcome by coarse persuasion, or reach at full run, you can catch with
apostolic guile. Learn the first-rate art of doing secular or Christian
work, and then it matters not whether your weapon be a basin or a pail.