BUYING A HORSE.
“And you know this Deacon Elkins to be a thoroughly reliable man in
every respect?”
“Indeed, I do,” said honest Nathan Robbins. “He is the very soul of
honor; couldn’t do a mean thing. I’d trust him with all I have.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear this, for I’m just going to buy a horse of
him.”
“A horse?”
“Yes—a horse!”
“Then I don’t know anything about him!”
A TRUE TALE.
After furnishing my house in the aforesaid economical and nondescript
fashion, came the trials of “planting time.” This was such an
unfragrant and expensive period that I pass over it as briefly as
possible. I saw it was necessary in conformity with the appalling
situation to alter one vowel in my Manorial Hall. The haul altogether
amounted to eighteen loads besides a hundred bags of vilely smelling
fertilizers. Agents for every kind of phosphates crowded around me,
descanting on the needs of the old land, until I began to comprehend
what the owner meant by “keeping it up.” With Gail Hamilton, I had
supposed the entire land of this earth to be pretty much the same age
until I adopted the “abandoned.” This I found was fairly senile in its
worthless decrepitude.
My expenditure was something prodigious.
Yes, “planting time” was a nightmare in broad daylight, but as I look
back, it seems a rosy dream, compared with the prolonged agonies of
buying a horse!
All my friends said I must have a horse to truly enjoy the country, and
it seemed a simple matter to procure an animal for my own use.
Livery-stable keepers, complaisant and cordial, were continually
driving around the corner into my yard, with a tremendous flourish
and style, chirking up old by-gones, drawing newly painted buggies,
patched-up phaetons, two-seated second-hand “Democrats,” high wagons,
low chaises, just for me to try. They all said that seeing I was a lady
and had just come among ’em, they would trade easy and treat me well.
Each mentioned the _real_ value, and a much lower price, at which I,
as a special favor, could secure the entire rig. Their prices were all
abominably exorbitant, so I decided to hire for a season. The dozen
beasts tried in two months, if placed in a row, would cure the worst
case of melancholia. Some shied; others were liable to be overcome by
“blind staggers”; three had the epizootic badly, and longed to lie
down; one was nearly blind. At last I was told of a lady who desired to
leave her pet horse and Sargent buggy in some country home during her
three months’ trip abroad.
Both were so highly praised as _just the thing_ that I took them on
faith.
I judge that a woman can lie worse than a man about a horse!
“You will love my Nellie” she wrote. “I hate to part with her, even for
the summer. She has been a famous racer in Canada—can travel easily
twenty-five miles a day. Will go better at the end of the journey than
at the beginning. I hear you are an accomplished driver, so I send my
pet to your care without anxiety.”
I sent a man to her home to drive out with this delightful treasure,
and pictured myself taking long and daily drives over our excellent
country roads. Nellie, _dear_ Nellie; I loved her already. How I would
pet her, and how fond she would become of me. Two lumps of sugar at
least, every day for her, and red ribbons for the whip. How she would
dash along! A horse for me at last! About 1.45 A.M., of the next day,
a carriage was heard slowly entering the yard. I could hardly wait
until morning to gloat over my gentle racer! At early dawn I visited
the stable and found John disgusted beyond measure with my bargain. A
worn-out, tumble-down, rickety carriage with wobbling wheels, and an
equally worn-out, thin, dejected, venerable animal, with an immense
blood spavin on left hind leg, recently blistered! It took three
weeks of constant doctoring, investment in Kendall’s Spavin Cure, and
consultation with an expensive veterinary surgeon, to get the whilom
race horse into a condition to slowly walk to market. I understood now
the force of the one truthful clause—“She will go better at the end
of the drive than at the beginning,” for it was well-nigh impossible
to get her stiff legs started without a fire kindled under them and
a measure of oats held enticingly before her. It was enraging, but
nothing to after experiences. All the disappointed livery men, their
complaisance and cordiality, wholly a thing of the past, were jubilant
that I had been so imposed upon by some one, even if they had failed.
And their looks, as they wheeled rapidly by me, as I crept along with
the poor, suffering, limping “Nellie,” were almost more than I could
endure.
Horses were again brought for inspection, and there was a repetition of
previous horrors. At last a man came from Mossgrown. He had an honest
face; he knew of a man who knew of a man whose brother had just _the_
horse for me, “sound, stylish, kind, gentle as a lamb, fast as the
wind.” Profiting by experience, I said I would look at it. Next day,
a young man, gawky and seemingly unsophisticated, brought the animal.
It looked well enough, and I was so tired. He was anxious to sell, but
only because he was going to be married and go West; needed money. And
he said with sweet simplicity: “Now I ain’t no jockey, I ain’t! You
needn’t be afeard of me—I say just what I mean. I want spot cash, I
do, and you can have horse, carriage, and harness for $125 down.” He
gave me a short drive, and we did go “like the wind.” I thought the
steed very hard to hold in, but he convinced me that it was not so. I
decided to take the creature a week on trial, which was a blow to that
guileless young man. And that very afternoon I started for the long,
pleasant drive I had been dreaming about since early spring.
The horse looked quiet enough, but I concluded to take my German
domestic along for extra safety. I remembered his drawling direction,
“Doan’t pull up the reins unless you want him to go pretty lively,”
so held the reins rather loosely for a moment only, for this last
hope wheeled round the corner as if possessed, and after trotting,
then breaking, then darting madly from side to side, started into a
full run. I pulled with all my might; Gusta stood up and helped. No
avail. On we rushed to sudden death. No one in sight anywhere. With one
Herculean effort, bred of the wildest despair, we managed to rein him
in at a sharp right angle, and we succeeded in calming his fury, and
tied the panting, trembling fiend to a post. Then Gusta mounted guard
while I walked home in the heat and dirt, fully half a mile to summon
John.
I learned that _that_ horse had never before been driven by a woman. He
evidently was not pleased.
Soon the following appeared among the local items of interest in the
Gooseville Clarion:
Uriel Snooks, who has been working in the cheese factory at
Frogville, is now to preside over chair number four in Baldwin’s
Tonsorial Establishment on Main Street.
Kate Sanborn is trying another horse.
These bits of information in the papers were a boon to the various
reporters, but most annoying to me. The Bungtown Gazetteer announced
that “a well-known Boston poetess had purchased the Britton Farm, and
was fitting up the old homestead for city boarders!” I couldn’t import a
few hens, invest in a new dog, or order a lawn mower, but a full account
would grace the next issue of all the weeklies. I sympathized with the
old woman who exclaimed in desperation:
“Great Jerusalem, ca’nt I stir,
Without a-raisin’ some feller’s fur?”
At last I suspected the itinerant butcher of doing double duty as a
reporter, and found that he “was engaged by several editors to pick up
bits of news for the press” as he went his daily rounds. “But this,”
I exclaimed, “is just what I don’t want and can’t allow. Now if you
should drive in here some day and discover me dead, reclining against
yonder noble elm, or stark at its base, surrounded by my various pets,
don’t allude to it in the most indirect way. I prefer the funeral to be
strictly private. Moreover, if I notice another ‘item’ about me, I’ll
buy of your rival.” And the trouble ceased.
But the horses! Still they came and went. I used to pay my friend the
rubicund surgeon to test some of these highly recommended animals in a
short drive with me.
One pronounced absolutely unrivaled was discovered by my wise mentor to
be “watch-eyed,” “rat-tailed,” with a swollen gland on the neck, would
shy at a stone, stand on hind legs for a train, with various other
minor defects. I grew fainthearted, discouraged, cynical, bitter. Was
there no horse for me? I became town-talk as “a drefful fussy old maid
who didn’t know her own mind, and couldn’t be suited _no_ way.”
I remember one horse brought by a butcher from West Bungtown. It was,
in the vernacular, a buck-skin. Hide-bound, with ribs so prominent they
suggested a wash-board. The two fore legs were well bent out at the
knees; both hind legs were swelled near the hoofs. His ears nearly as
large as a donkey’s; one eye covered with a cataract, the other deeply
sunken. A Roman nose, accentuated by a wide stripe, aided the pensive
expression of his drooping under lip. He leaned against the shafts as
if he were tired.
“There, Marm,” said the owner, eying my face as an amused expression
stole over it; “ef you don’t care for _style_, ef ye want a good,
steddy critter, and a critter that can _go_, and a critter that _any_
lady can drive, _there’s_ the critter for ye!”
I did buy at last, for life had become a burden. An _interested_
neighbor (who really pitied me?) induced me to buy a pretty little
black horse. I named him “O.K.”
After a week I changed to “N.G.”
After he had run away, and no one would buy him, “D.B.”
At last I succeeded in exchanging this shying and dangerous creature
for a melancholy, overworked mare at a livery stable. I hear that
“D.B.” has since killed two _I_-talians by throwing them out when not
sufficiently inebriated to fall against rocks with safety.
And my latest venture is a _backer_.
Horses have just as many disagreeable traits, just as much
individuality in their badness, as human beings. Under kind treatment,
daily petting, and generous feeding, “Dolly” is too frisky and
headstrong for a lady to drive.
“Sell that treacherous beast at once or you will be killed,” writes an
anxious friend who had a slight acquaintance with her moods.
I want now to find an equine reliance whose motto is “Nulla vestigia
retrorsum,” or “No steps backward.”
I have pasted Mr. Hale’s famous motto, “Look forward and not back,”
over her stall—but with no effect. The “Lend a Hand” applies to those
we yell for when the backing is going on.
By the way, a witty woman said the other day that men always had the
advantage. A woman looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt;
Bellamy looked back and made sixty thousand dollars.
Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt, in his amusing book “Five Acres too Much”
gives even a more tragic picture, saying: “My experience of horseflesh
has been various and instructive. I have been thrown over their heads
and slid over their tails; have been dragged by saddle, stirrups, and
tossed out of wagons. I have had them to back and to kick, to run and
to bolt, to stand on their hind feet and kick with their front, and
then reciprocate by standing on their front and kicking with their hind
feet.... I have been thrown much with horses and more by them.”
“Horses are the most miserable creatures, invariably doing precisely
what they ought not to do; a pest, a nuisance, a bore.” Or, as some one
else puts it:
“A horse at its best is an amiable idiot; at its worst, a dangerous
maniac.”