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Buying A Horse
by
“Look here,” said his neighbor, finding him in this low state, “why don’t you get a horse of the gentleman who furnishes mine?” This had been suggested before, and my friend explained that he had disliked to make trouble. His scruples were lightly set aside, and he suffered himself to be entreated. The fact was he was so discouraged with his attempt to buy a horse that if any one had now given him such a horse as he wanted he would have taken it.
One sunny, breezy morning his neighbor drove my friend over to the beautiful farm of the good genius on whose kindly offices he had now fixed his languid hopes. I need not say what the landscape was in mid-August, or how, as they drew near the farm, the air was enriched with the breath of vast orchards of early apples,–apples that no forced fingers rude shatter from their stems, but that ripen and mellow untouched, till they drop into the straw with which the orchard aisles are bedded; it is the poetry of horticulture; it is Art practicing the wise and gracious patience of Nature, and offering to the Market a Summer Sweeting of the Hesperides.
The possessor of this luscious realm at once took my friend’s case into consideration; he listened, the owner of a hundred horses, with gentle indulgence to the shapeless desires of a man whose wildest dream was one horse. At the end he said, “I see you want a horse that can take care of himself.”
“No,” replied my friend, with the inspiration of despair. “I want a horse that can take care of me.”
The good genius laughed, and turned the conversation. Neither he nor my friend’s neighbor was a man of many words, and like taciturn people they talked in low tones. The three moved about the room and looked at the Hispano-Roman pictures; they had a glass of sherry; from time to time something was casually murmured about Frank. My friend felt that he was in good hands, and left the affair to them. It ended in a visit to the stable, where it appeared that this gentleman had no horse to sell among his hundred which exactly met my friend’s want, but that he proposed to lend him Frank while a certain other animal was put in training for the difficult office he required of a horse. One of the men was sent for Frank, and in the mean time my friend was shown some gaunt and graceful thoroughbreds, and taught to see the difference between them and the plebeian horse. But Frank, though no thoroughbred, eclipsed these patricians when he came. He had a little head, and a neck gallantly arched; he was black and plump and smooth, and though he carried himself with a petted air, and was a dandy to the tips of his hooves, his knowing eye was kindly. He turned it upon my friend with the effect of understanding his case at a glance.
It was in this way that for the rest of the long, lovely summer peace was re-established in his heart. There was no question of buying or selling Frank; there were associations that endeared him beyond money to his owner; but my friend could take him without price. The situation had its humiliation for a man who had been arrogantly trying to buy a horse, but he submitted with grateful meekness, and with what grace Heaven granted him; and Frank gayly entered upon the peculiar duties of his position. His first duty was to upset all preconceived notions of the advantage of youth in a horse. Frank was not merely not coming seven or nine, but his age was an even number,–he was sixteen; and it was his owner’s theory, which Frank supported, that if a horse was well used he was a good horse till twenty-five.
The truth is that Frank looked like a young horse; he was a dandy without any of the ghastliness which attends the preservation of youth in old beaux of another species. When my friend drove him in the rehabilitated phaeton he felt that the turn-out was stylish, and he learned to consult certain eccentricities of Frank’s in the satisfaction of his pride. One of these was a high reluctance to be passed on the road. Frank was as lazy a horse–but lazy in a self-respectful, aesthetic way–as ever was; yet if he heard a vehicle at no matter how great distance behind him (and he always heard it before his driver), he brightened with resolution and defiance, and struck out with speed that made competition difficult. If my friend found that the horse behind was likely to pass Frank, he made a merit of holding him in. If they met a team, he lay back in his phaeton, and affected not to care to be going faster than a walk, any way.