Part 10 (1/2)
”Of course I am. Why shouldn't I?”
”Don't you fear it might perhaps give offence? There are some people, you know, who think it right to accompany a notice of death with verses.
Besides, does it seem precisely proper to treat such a solemn subject as death with so much levity?”
”My dear, the persons who use those ridiculous rhymes which sometimes appear in the papers for the purpose of parading their grief before the public cannot have very nice sensibilities.”
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”Are you sure of that? At any rate, is it not possible that a verse which appears to you and me very silly may be the attempt of some bereaved mother to give in that forlorn fas.h.i.+on expression to her great agony? I shouldn't like to ridicule even so wretched a cry from a suffering heart.”
”The suggestion is creditable to your goodness. But I would like to retain the story of Slimmer's folly, and I'll tell you what I will do: I will publish your opinions upon the subject, so that those who read the narrative may understand that the family of Adeler is not wholly careless of propriety.” So here are the story and the protest; and those to whom the former is offensive may find what consolation can be obtained from the fact that the latter has been offered in advance of any expression of opinion by indignant readers whose grief for the departed tends to run into rhyme.
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CHAPTER IX.
THE REASON WHY I PURCHASED A HORSE--A PECULIAR CHARACTERISTIC--DRIVING BY THE RIVER--OUR HORSE AS A PERSECUTOR--HE BECOMES A GENUINE NIGHTMARE--EXPERIMENTING WITH HIS TAIL--HOW OUR HORSE DIED--IN RELATION TO PIRATES--MRS. JONES'S BOLD CORSAIR--A LAMENTABLE TALE.
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It is probable that I should never have bought a horse if I had not been strongly urged to do so by other persons. I do not care a great deal for riding and driving; and if it ever did occur to me that it would, perhaps, be a nice thing to have a horse of my own, I regarded the necessary expense as much too great for the small amount of enjoyment that could be obtained from the investment. It always seemed to me to be much cheaper to hire a horse at a livery-stable if only an occasional drive was desired; and I cling to that theory yet. But everybody else seemed to think I ought to own a horse. Mrs. Adeler was especially anxious about it. She insisted that we were doing very well in the world, and she could not see the use of having means if we were to live always as we did when we were poor. She said she often wanted to take a little drive along the river-road in the evening with the children, and she frequently wished to visit her friends in the country, but she couldn't bear to go with a strange horse of which she knew nothing.
My friends used to say, ”Adeler, I wonder you don't keep a horse and take your family out sometimes;” and they hammered away at the theme until I actually began to feel as if the public suspected me of being a n.i.g.g.ardly and cruel tyrant, who hugged my gold to my bosom and gloated over the misery of my wife and children--gloated because they couldn't have a horse. People used to come down from the city to see us, and after examining the house and garden, they would remark, ”Very charming!--very charming, indeed! A little paradise, in fact; but, Adeler, why don't you buy a horse?”
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I gradually grew nervous upon the subject, and was tolerably well convinced that there would never be perfect happiness in my family until I purchased a steed of some kind. At last, one day Cooley had a yellow horse knocked down to him at one of those auction-sales which are known in the rural districts as ”V_an_dues.” And when I saw Cooley drive past the house, every afternoon, with that saffron brute, and his family in a dearborn wagon, and observed how he looked in at us and smiled superciliously, as if he was thinking, ”There lives a miserable outcast who has no horse and can't get one,” I determined to purchase at once.
I have not had much experience with horses, but I found one whose appearance and gait were fairly good, and I was particularly drawn toward him because the man recommended him as being ”urbane.” I had heard many descriptions of the points of a good horse, but this was the first time I had ever met a horse whose most prominent characteristic was urbanity. It seemed to me that the quality was an excellent one, and I made a bargain on the spot and drove home.
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”Mrs. Adeler,” I said, as I exhibited the purchase to her, ”I do not think this horse is very fast; I do not regard him as in the highest sense beautiful; he may even be deficient in wind; his tail certainly is short; and I think I can detect in his forelegs a tendency to spring too far forward at the knees; but, Mrs. Adeler, the horse is urbane. The man said that his urbanity amounted to a positive weakness, and that is why I bought him. If a horse is not urbane, my dear, it is useless, no matter what its merit in other respects.”
She said that had been her opinion from early childhood.
”I do not care greatly, Mrs. Adeler, for excessive speed. Give me a horse that can proceed with merely a tolerable degree of celerity and I am content. I never could comprehend why a man whose horse can trot a mile in two minutes and forty seconds should be made unhappy because another man's horse trots the same distance one second sooner--that is, of course, supposing that they are not running for money. One second of time never makes any especial difference to me, even when I am in a hurry. What I want in a horse is not swiftness, but urbanity. I would rather have a kind-hearted horse, like ours, than the most rapid trotter with a wicked disposition.”
For a while I enjoyed having a horse, and I felt glad I had bought him.
It seemed very good to drive down by the river-bank upon a pleasant evening, with the cool breeze blowing in from the water, and the country around beautiful with the bright foliage of early autumn. There was a sufficient compensation for the heat and wretchedness of the busy day in that quiet journey over the level road and past the fragrant fields in the early twilight; and as we came home amid the deepening shadows, we could find pleasure in watching the schooners far off in the channel flinging out their lights, and we could see the rays streaming across the wide interval of rippling surface, and moving weirdly and strangely with the motion of the water.
Sometimes, upon going out, we would overtake Cooley in his dearborn; and then it was felicitous to observe how, when I touched my horse with the whip, the animal put his head down, elevated his abbreviated tail to a horizontal position and left Cooley far, far behind, flogging his tawny horse with such fury as would surely have subjected him to the reproaches of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals if that excellent organization had been present. My horse could achieve a tolerably rapid gait when he desired to do so. That fact made existence in this world of anguish and tears seem even more sad to Cooley than it had done previously. I feel sure that he would have given fabulous sums if his horse could have trotted a mile in a minute--just once--when we were upon the road together. I began to think that it was just as well, after all, to have a progressive horse as a slow one.
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But when the novelty of the thing had pa.s.sed, my old indisposition to amus.e.m.e.nt of that kind gradually returned. I drove less frequently. One day my man said to me:
”Mr. Adeler, that hoss is a-eatin' his head off, sir. If you don't take him out, he'll be so wild that he'll bu'st the machine to flinders, sir.”