Out of the Hurly-Burly Part 10

"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."

The threatened catastrophe seemed so alarming that I took him out, although I had important work to do at home. The next day I wanted to stay up in the city to go to a lecture; but that morning, early, the horse again displayed an alarming amount of friskiness, and I felt as if I must go down and exercise him. I drove him for three hours at a rapid gait, and succeeded in working off at least the exuberance of his spirits.

On the following Wednesday I came home in the afternoon, exhausted with work, and intending to retire at an early hour. At half-past six o'clock, Judge Pitman came in. He remarked:

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"Adeler, that horse of yourn'll certainly go crazy if you don't move him around. Mind me. He kicks like a flintlock musket now if you come within forty foot of the stable."

I went out and hitched up, and that night I drove twenty-four miles at a frightful speed. Horses have, perhaps, gone farther and faster, but few have been pushed forward with a smaller regard for consequences. Nothing but a recollection of the cost of the horse restrained me from driving him into the river and leaving him there.

By degrees the despicable brute became the curse of my existence. If I desired to go on a journey, the restlessness of the horse had first to be overcome. If I received an invitation to a party, the horse must be exercised beforehand. If I had an important article to write, I must roam around the country behind that horse for two or three hours, holding him in with such force that my hands were made too unsteady for penmans.h.i.+p. If I wanted to take a row on the river--an exercise of which I am pa.s.sionately fond--that detestable animal had to be danced up and down the turnpike in order to keep him from kicking the stable to pieces. And he was recommended to me as "urbane"!

He made my life unhappy. I became depressed and morose. Sometimes when, amid a circle of friends, there was a provocation to laughter, and I partic.i.p.ated in the general hilarity, I would suddenly become conscious of the fact that the horse was in active existence, and the mirth would be extinguished in gloom. He mingled with my dreams. Visions of a bob-tailed horse consuming spectral oats, and kicking with millions of legs, disturbed my rest at night. I rushed with him over countless leagues of shadowy road, and plunged with him over incomprehensible precipices. He organized himself into hideous nightmare shapes, and charged wildly over me as I slept, and filled all the air of that mysterious slumber-land with the noise of his demoniac neighing.

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The reality was bad enough without the unreal nocturnal horrors. I might have sold the brute, but my wife really wanted to have a horse, and I wished to oblige her. But it was very wearing to hear about constantly the feeling of responsibility which the animal engendered. I had to choose between driving him continually and having the lives of the members of my family imperiled when they took him out; and the consciousness that whether there was sickness or business, storm or earthquake, calamity or death, the horse must be driven, gradually placed me in the position of a man who is haunted by some dreadful spectre that clings to him and overshadows him for ever and for ever.

The perpetual nervous worry told upon me. I became thin. My clothing hung loose upon me. I took up two inches in my waistcoat strap. The appet.i.te which enabled me to find enjoyment at the table deserted me.

The food seemed tasteless; and if in the midst of a meal the neigh of the horse came eddying up through the air from the stable, I turned away with a feeling of disgust, and felt as if I wanted to prod somebody with the carving-knife.

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One day my wife said to me:

"Mr. Adeler, you know that I urged you strongly to buy that horse, and I thought he would do, but--"

"But now you want to sell him! ha! ha!" I exclaimed, with delight. "Very well, I'll send him to the auctioneer this very day."

"I wasn't going to say that," she remarked. "What I wanted to mention was that nearly everybody in good circ.u.mstances about here drives a pair, and I think we ought to get another horse; don't you, my dear?

It's so much nicer than having only one."

"Mrs. Adeler," I said, solemnly, "that one horse down there in the stable has reduced me to a skeleton and made me utterly miserable. I will do as you say if you insist upon it, but I tell you plainly that if another horse is brought upon these premises I shall go mad."

"Don't speak in that manner, my dear."

"I tell you, Mrs. Adeler, that I shall go stark, staring mad! Take your choice: go without the other horse or have a maniac husband."

She said, of course, she would do without the horse.

But the affliction was suddenly and unexpectedly removed My horse had a singularly brief tail, and I thought it might be that some of his violent demonstrations in the stable were induced by his inability to switch off the flies which alighted upon sensitive portions of the body.

It occurred to me to get him up an artificial tail for home use, and I procured a piece of thick rope for the purpose. There was, too, a certain humorousness about the idea that pleased me; and as the amount of jocularity which that horse had occasioned had, thus far, been particularly small, the notion had peculiar attractiveness.

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