BUYING A HORSE

 BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

_The Riverside Press Cambridge_1916

COPYRIGHT, 1879BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO. 

COPYRIGHT, 1916BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BUYING A HORSE

If one has money enough, there seems no reason why one should not go andbuy such a horse as he wants. This is the commonly accepted theory, onwhich the whole commerce in horses is founded, and on which my friendproceeded. 

He was about removing from Charlesbridge, where he had lived many happyyears without a horse, farther into the country, where there werecharming drives and inconvenient distances, and where a horse would bevery desirable, if not quite necessary. But as a horse seemed at firstan extravagant if not sinful desire, he began by talking vaguely round, and rather hinting than declaring that he thought somewhat of buying. The professor to whom he first intimated his purpose flung himself fromhis horse's back to the grassy border of the sidewalk where my friendstood, and said he would give him a few points. "In the first placedon't buy a horse that shows much daylight under him, unless you buy ahorse-doctor _with_ him; get a short-legged horse; and he ought to beshort and thick in the barrel, "--or words to that effect. "Don't get ahorse with a narrow forehead: there are horse-fools as well as the otherkind, and you want a horse with room for brains. And look out that he's_all right forward_. "

"What's that?" asked my friend, hearing this phrase for the first time. 

"That he isn't tender in his fore-feet, --that the hoof isn'tcontracted, " said the professor, pointing out the well-planted foot ofhis own animal. 

"What ought I to pay for a horse?" pursued my friend, struggling to fixthe points given by the professor in a mind hitherto unused to points ofthe kind. 

"Well, horses are cheap, now; and you ought to get a fair familyhorse--You want a family horse?"

"Yes. "

"Something you can ride and drive both? Something your children candrive?"

"Yes, yes. "

"Well, you ought to get such a horse as that for a hundred andtwenty-five dollars. "

This was the figure my friend had thought of; he drew a breath ofrelief. "Where did you buy your horse?"

"Oh, I always get my horses"--the plural abashed my friend--"at theChevaliers'. If you throw yourself on their mercy, they'll treat youwell. I'll send you a note to them. "

"Do!" cried my friend, as the professor sprang upon his horse, andgalloped away. 

My friend walked home encouraged; his purpose of buying a horse had notseemed so monstrous, at least to this hardened offender. He now began toannounce it more boldly; he said right and left that he wished to buy ahorse, but that he would not go above a hundred. This was not true, buthe wished to act prudently, and to pay a hundred and twenty-five only inextremity. He carried the professor's note to the Chevaliers', who dulyhonored it, understood at once what my friend wanted, and said theywould look out for him. They were sorry he had not happened in a littlesooner, --they had just sold the very horse he wanted. I may as well sayhere that they were not able to find him a horse, but that they used himwith the strictest honor, and that short of supplying his want they wereperfect. 

In the mean time the irregular dealers began to descend upon him, aswell as amateurs to whom he had mentioned his wish for a horse, and hispremises at certain hours of the morning presented the effect of ahorse-fair, or say rather a museum of equine bricabrac. At first heblushed at the spectacle, but he soon became hardened to it, and likedthe excitement of driving one horse after another round the block, anddeciding upon him. To a horse, they had none of the qualities commendedby the professor, but they had many others which the dealers praised. These persons were not discouraged when he refused to buy, butcheerfully returned the next day with others differently ruinous. Theywere men of a spirit more obliging than my friend has found in otherwalks. One of them, who paid him a prefatory visit in his library, infive minutes augmented from six to seven hundred and fifty pounds theweight of a pony-horse, which he wished to sell. ("What you want, " saidthe Chevaliers, "is a pony-horse, " and my friend, gratefully catching atthe phrase, had gone about saying he wanted a pony-horse. After that, hulking brutes of from eleven to thirteen hundred pounds were every daybrought to him as pony-horses. ) The same dealer came another day with amustang, in whom was no fault, and who had every appearance of speed, but who was only marking time as it is called in military drill, Ibelieve, when he seemed to be getting swiftly over the ground; he showeda sociable preference for the curbstone in turning corners, and wascondemned, to be replaced the next evening by a pony-horse that a childmight ride or drive, and that especially would not shy. Upon experiment, he shied half across the road, and the fact was reported to the dealer. He smiled compassionately. "What did he shy _at_?"

"A wheelbarrow. "

"Well! I never see the hoss _yet_ that _wouldn't_ shy at a wheelbarrow. "

My friend owned that a wheelbarrow was of an alarming presence, but hehad his reserves respecting the self-control and intelligence of thispony-horse. The dealer amiably withdrew him, and said that he wouldbring next day a horse--if he could get the owner to part with a familypet--that _would_ suit; but upon investigation it appeared that thistreasure was what is called a calico-horse, and my friend, who waswithout the ambition to figure in the popular eye as a straycircus-rider, declined to see him. 

These adventurous spirits were not squeamish. They thrust their handsinto the lathery mouths of their brutes to show the state of theirteeth, and wiped their fingers on their trousers or grass afterwards, without a tremor, though my friend could never forbear a shudder at thesight. If sometimes they came with a desirable animal, the price was farbeyond his modest figure; but generally they seemed to think that he didnot want a desirable animal. In most cases, the pony-horse pronouncedsentence upon himself by some gross and ridiculous blemish; butsometimes my friend failed to hit upon any tenable excuse for refusinghim. In such an event, he would say, with an air of easy and candidcomradery, "Well, now, what's the matter with him?" And then the dealer, passing his hand down one of the pony-horse's fore-legs, would respond, with an upward glance of searching inquiry at my friend, "Well, he's aleetle mite tender for'a'd. "

I am afraid my friend grew to have a cruel pleasure in forcing them tothis exposure of the truth; but he excused himself upon the ground thatthey never expected him to be alarmed at this tenderness forward, andthat their truth was not a tribute to virtue, but was contempt of hisignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth; and he felt that it must be hispart thereafter to confute the common belief that there is no truth inhorse-trades. 

These people were not usually the owners of the horses they brought, butthe emissaries or agents of the owners. Often they came merely to show ahorse, and were not at all sure that his owner would part with him onany terms, as he was a favorite with the ladies of the family. Animpenetrable mystery hung about the owner, through which he sometimesdimly loomed as a gentleman in failing health, who had to give up hisdaily drives, and had no use for the horse. There were cases in whichthe dealer came secretly, from pure zeal, to show a horse whose ownersupposed him still in the stable, and who must be taken back before hisabsence was noticed. If my friend insisted upon knowing the owner andconferring with him, in any of these instances, it was darkly admittedthat he was a gentleman in the livery business over in Somerville ordown in the Lower Port. Truth, it seemed, might be absent or present ina horse-trade, but mystery was essential. 

The dealers had a jargon of their own, in which my friend became anexpert. They did not say that a horse weighed a thousand pounds, but tenhundred; he was not worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars, but one anda quarter; he was not going on seven years old, but was coming seven. There are curious facts, by the way, in regard to the age of horseswhich are not generally known. A horse is never of an even age: that is, he is not six, or eight, or ten, but five, or seven, or nine years old;he is sometimes, but not often, eleven; he is _never_ thirteen; hisfavorite time of life is seven, and he rarely gets beyond it, if onsale. My friend found the number of horses brought into the world in1871 quite beyond computation. 

He also found that most hard-working horses were sick or ailing, as mosthard-working men and women are; that perfectly sound horses are as rareas perfectly sound human beings, and are apt, like the latter, to bevicious. 

He began to have a quick eye for the characteristics of horses, andcould walk round a proffered animal and scan his points with the best. "What, " he would ask, of a given beast, "makes him let his lower liphang down in that imbecile manner?"

"Oh, he's got a parrot-mouth. Some folks like 'em. " Here the dealerwould pull open the creature's flabby lips, and discover a beak likethat of a polyp; and the cleansing process on the grass or trouserswould take place. 

Of another. "What makes him trot in that spread-out, squatty way, behind?" he demanded, after the usual tour of the block. 

"He travels wide. Horse men prefer that. "

They preferred any ugliness or awkwardness in a horse to the oppositegrace or charm, and all that my friend could urge, in meek withdrawalfrom negotiation, was that he was not of an educated taste. In thecourse of long talks, which frequently took the form of warnings, hebecame wise in the tricks practiced by all dealers except hisinterlocutor. One of these, a device for restoring youth to an animalnearing the dangerous limit of eleven, struck him as peculiarlyingenious. You pierce the forehead, and blow into it with a quill; thisgives an agreeable fullness, and erects the drooping ears in a spiritedand mettlesome manner, so that a horse coming eleven will look for atime as if he were coming five. 

After a thorough course of the volunteer dealers, and after haunting theChevaliers' stables for several weeks, my friend found that not moneyalone was needed to buy a horse. The affair began to wear a sinisteraspect. He had an uneasy fear that in several cases he had refused thevery horse he wanted with the _aplomb_ he had acquired in dismissingundesirable beasts. The fact was he knew less about horses than when hebegan to buy, while he had indefinitely enlarged his idle knowledge ofmen, of their fatuity and hollowness. He learned that men whom he hadalways envied their brilliant omniscience in regard to horses, as theydrove him out behind their dashing trotters, were quite ignorant andhelpless in the art of buying; they always got somebody else to buytheir horses for them. "Find a man you can trust, " they said, "and thenput yourself in his hands. And _never_ trust anybody about the health ofa horse. Take him to a veterinary surgeon, and have him go all overhim. "

My friend grew sardonic; then he grew melancholy and haggard. There wassomething very strange in the fact that a person unattainted of crime, and not morally disabled in any known way, could not take his money andbuy such a horse as he wanted with it. His acquaintance began torecommend men to him. "If you want a horse, Captain Jenks is your man. ""Why don't you go to Major Snaffle? He'd take pleasure in it. " But myfriend, naturally reluctant to trouble others, and sickened by longfailure, as well as maddened by the absurdity that if you wanted a horseyou must first get a man, neglected this really good advice. He lost hisinterest in the business, and dismissed with lack-lustre indifferencethe horses which continued to be brought to his gate. He felt that hisposition before the community was becoming notorious and ridiculous. Heslept badly; his long endeavor for a horse ended in nightmares. 

One day he said to a gentleman whose turn-out he had long admired, "Iwonder if you couldn't find me a horse!"

"Want a horse?"

"Want a horse! I thought my need was known beyond the sun. I thought mywant of a horse was branded on my forehead. "

This gentleman laughed, and then he said, "I've just seen a mare thatwould suit you. I thought of buying her, but I want a match, and thismare is too small. She'll be round here in fifteen minutes, and I'lltake you out with her. Can you wait?"

"Wait!" My friend laughed in his turn. 

The mare dashed up before the fifteen minutes had passed. She wasbeautiful, black as a coal; and kind as a kitten, said her driver. Myfriend thought her head was rather big. "Why, yes, she's a _pony_-horse;that's what I like about her. "

She trotted off wonderfully, and my friend felt that the thing was nowdone. 

The gentleman, who was driving, laid his head on one side, and listened. "Clicks, don't she?"

"She _does_ click, " said my friend obligingly. 

"Hear it?" asked the gentleman. 

"Well, if you ask me, " said my friend, "I _don't_ hear it. What _is_clicking?"

"Oh, striking the heel of her fore-foot with the toe of her hind-foot. Sometimes it comes from bad shoeing. Some people like it. I don'tmyself. " After a while he added, "If you can get this mare for a hundredand twenty-five, you'd better buy her. "

"Well, I will, " said my friend. He would have bought her, in fact, ifshe had clicked like a noiseless sewing-machine. But the owner, remoteas Medford, and invisibly dealing, as usual, through a third person, would not sell her for one and a quarter; he wanted one and a half. Besides, another Party was trying to get her; and now ensued anegotiation which for intricacy and mystery surpassed all the others. Itwas conducted in my friend's interest by one who had the difficult taskof keeping the owner's imagination in check and his demands withinbounds, for it soon appeared that he wanted even more than one and ahalf for her. Unseen and inaccessible, he grew every day moreunmanageable. He entered into relations with the other Party, and it allended in his sending her out one day after my friend had gone into thecountry, and requiring him to say at once that he would give one and ahalf. He was not at home, and he never saw the little mare again. Thisconfirmed him in the belief that she was the very horse he ought to havehad. 

People had now begun to say to him, "Why don't you advertise? Advertisefor a gentleman's pony-horse and phaeton and harness complete. You'llhave a perfect procession of them before night. " This proved true. Hisadvertisement, mystically worded after the fashion of those things, found abundant response. But the establishments which he would havetaken he could not get at the figure he had set, and those which hismoney would buy he would not have. They came at all hours of the day;and he never returned home after an an absence without meeting thereproach that _now_ the very horse he wanted had just been driven away, and would not be brought back, as his owner lived in Billerica, and onlyhappened to be down. A few equipages really appeared desirable, but inregard to these his jaded faculties refused to work: he could decidenothing; his volition was extinct; he let them come and go. 

It was at this period that people who had at first been surprised thathe wished to buy a horse came to believe that he had bought one, andwere astonished to learn that he had not. He felt the pressure of publicopinion. 

He began to haunt the different sale-stables in town, and to look athorses with a view to buying at private sale. Every facility for testingthem was offered him, but he could not make up his mind. In feeblewantonness he gave appointments which he knew he should not keep, and, passing his days in an agony of multitudinous indecision, he added tothe lies in the world the hideous sum of his broken engagements. Fromtime to time he forlornly appeared at the Chevaliers', and refreshed hiscorrupted nature by contact with their sterling integrity. Once heventured into their establishment just before an auction began, andremained dazzled by the splendor of a spectacle which I fancy can beparalleled only by some dream of a mediæval tournament. The horses, brilliantly harnessed, accurately shod, and standing tall on burnishedhooves, their necks curved by the check rein and their black and blondemanes flowing over the proud arch, lustrous and wrinkled like satin, were ranged in a glittering hemicycle. They affected my friend like theyouth and beauty of his earliest evening parties; he experienced a senseof bashfulness, of sickening personal demerit. He could not have had theaudacity to bid on one of those superb creatures, if all the Chevalierstogether had whispered him that here at last was the very horse. 

I pass over an unprofitable interval in which he abandoned himself todespair, and really gave up the hope of being able ever to buy a horse. During this interval he removed from Charlesbridge to the country, andfound himself, to his self-scorn and self-pity, actually reduced tohiring a livery horse by the day. But relief was at hand. The carpenterwho had remained to finish up the new house after my friend had goneinto it bethought himself of a firm in his place who brought on horsesfrom the West, and had the practice of selling a horse on trial, andconstantly replacing it with other horses till the purchaser was suited. This seemed an ideal arrangement, and the carpenter said that he_thought_ they had the very horse my friend wanted. 

The next day he drove him up, and upon the plan of successive exchangestill the perfect horse was reached, my friend bought him for one and aquarter, the figure which he had kept in mind from the first. He boughta phaeton and harness from the same people, and when the whole equipagestood at his door, he felt the long-delayed thrill of pride andsatisfaction. The horse was of the Morgan breed, a bright bay, small andround and neat, with a little head tossed high, and a gentle yet alertmovement. He was in the prime of youth, of the age of which every horsedesires to be, and was just coming seven. My friend had already takenhim to a horse-doctor, who for one dollar had gone all over him, andpronounced him sound as a fish, and complimented his new owner upon hisacquisition. It all seemed too good to be true. As Billy turned his softeye on the admiring family group, and suffered one of the children tosmooth his nose while another held a lump of sugar to his dainty lips, his amiable behavior restored my friend to his peace of mind and hislong-lost faith in a world of reason. 

The ridiculous planet, wavering bat-like through space, on which it hadbeen impossible for an innocent man to buy a suitable horse was a dreamof the past, and he had the solid, sensible old earth under his feetonce more. He mounted into the phaeton and drove off with his wife; hereturned and gave each of the children a drive in succession. He toldthem that any of them could drive Billy as much as they liked, and hequieted a clamor for exclusive ownership on the part of each bydeclaring that Billy belonged to the whole family. To this day he cannotlook back to those moments without tenderness. If Billy had any apparentfault, it was an amiable indolence. But this made him all the safer forthe children, and it did not really amount to laziness. While on sale hehad been driven in a provision cart, and had therefore the habit ofstanding unhitched. One had merely to fling the reins into the bottom ofthe phaeton and leave Billy to his own custody. His other habit ofdrawing up at kitchen gates was not confirmed, and the fact that hestumbled on his way to the doctor who pronounced him blameless wasreasonably attributed to a loose stone at the foot of the hill; themisstep resulted in a barked shin, but a little wheel-grease, in a horseof Billy's complexion, easily removed the evidence of this. 

It was natural that after Billy was bought and paid for, severalextremely desirable horses should be offered to my friend by theirowners, who came in person, stripped of all the adventitious mystery ofagents and middle-men. They were gentlemen, and they spoke the Englishhabitual with persons not corrupted by horses. My friend saw them comeand go with grief; for he did not like to be shaken in his belief thatBilly was the only horse in the world for him, and he would have likedto purchase their animals, if only to show his appreciation of honor andfrankness and sane language. Yet he was consoled by the possession ofBilly, whom he found increasingly excellent and trustworthy. Any of thefamily drove him about; he stood unhitched; he was not afraid of cars;he was as kind as a kitten; he had not, as the neighboring coachmansaid, a voice, though he seemed a little loively in coming out of thestable sometimes. He went well under the saddle; he was a beauty, and ifhe had a voice, it was too great satisfaction in his personalappearance. 

One evening after tea, the young gentleman, who was about to drive Billyout, stung by the reflection that he had not taken blackberries andcream twice, ran into the house to repair the omission, and left Billy, as usual, unhitched at the door. During his absence, Billy caught sightof his stable, and involuntarily moved towards it. Finding himselfunchecked, he gently increased his pace; and when my friend, looking upfrom the melon-patch which he was admiring, called out, "Ho, Billy!Whoa, Billy!" and headed him off from the gap, Billy profited by thecircumstance to turn into the pear orchard. The elastic turf under hisunguided hoof seemed to exhilarate him; his pace became a trot, acanter, a gallop, a tornado; the reins fluttered like ribbons in theair; the phaeton flew ruining after. In a terrible cyclone the equipageswept round the neighbor's house, vanished, reappeared, swooped down hislawn, and vanished again. It was incredible. 

My friend stood transfixed among his melons. He knew that his neighbor'schildren played under the porte-cochère on the other side of the housewhich Billy had just surrounded in his flight, and probably. .. . Myfriend's first impulse was not to go and see, but to walk into his ownhouse, and ignore the whole affair. But you cannot really ignore anaffair of that kind. You must face it, and commonly it stares you out ofcountenance. Commonly, too, it knows how to choose its time so as todisgrace as well as crush its victim. His neighbor had people to tea, and long before my friend reached the house the host and his guests wereall out on the lawn, having taken the precaution to bring their napkinswith them. 

"The children!" gasped my friend. 

"Oh, they were all in bed, " said the neighbor, and he began to laugh. That was right; my friend would have mocked at the calamity if it hadbeen his neighbor's. "Let us go and look up your phaeton. " He put hishand on the naked flank of a fine young elm, from which the bark hadjust been stripped. "Billy seems to have passed this way. "

At the foot of a stone-wall four feet high lay the phaeton, with threewheels in the air, and the fourth crushed flat against the axle; thewillow back was broken, the shafts were pulled out, and Billy was gone. 

"Good thing there was nobody in it, " said the neighbor. 

"Good thing it didn't run down some Irish family, and get you in fordamages, " said a guest. 

It appeared, then, that there were two good things about this disaster. My friend had not thought there were so many, but while he rejoiced inthis fact, he rebelled at the notion that a sorrow like that renderedthe sufferer in any event liable for damages, and he resolved that henever would have paid them. But probably he would. 

Some half-grown boys got the phaeton right-side up, and restored itsshafts and cushions, and it limped away with them towards thecarriage-house. Presently another half-grown boy came riding Billy upthe hill. Billy showed an inflated nostril and an excited eye, butphysically he was unharmed, save for a slight scratch on what wasdescribed as the off hind-leg; the reader may choose which leg this was. 

"The worst of it is, " said the guest, "that you never can trust 'emafter they've run off once. "

"Have some tea?" said the host to my friend. 

"No, thank you, " said my friend, in whose heart the worst of it rankled;and he walked home embittered by his guilty consciousness that Billyought never to have been left untied. But it was not this self-reproach;it was not the mutilated phaeton; it was not the loss of Billy, who mustnow be sold; it was the wreck of settled hopes, the renewed suspense offaith, the repetition of the tragical farce of buying another horse, that most grieved my friend. 

Billy's former owners made a feint of supplying other horses in hisplace, but the only horse supplied was an aged veteran with thescratches, who must have come seven early in our era, and who, from hishabit of getting about on tiptoe, must have been tender for'a'd beyondanything of my friend's previous experience. Probably if he could havewaited they might have replaced Billy in time, but their nextinstallment from the West produced nothing suited to his wants but ahorse with the presence and carriage of a pig, and he preferred to letthem sell Billy for what he would bring, and to trust his fateelsewhere. Billy had fallen nearly one half in value, and he broughtvery little--to his owner; though the new purchaser was afterwardsreported to value him at much more than what my friend had paid for him. These things are really mysteries; you cannot fathom them; it is idle totry. My friend remained grieving over his own folly and carelessness, with a fond hankering for the poor little horse he had lost, and thebelief that he should never find such another. Yet he was not without aphilanthropist's consolation. He had added to the stock of harmlesspleasures in a degree of which he could not have dreamed. All hisacquaintance knew that he had bought a horse, and they all seemed now toconspire in asking him how he got on with it. He was forced to confessthe truth. On hearing it, his friends burst into shouts of laughter, andsmote their persons, and stayed themselves against lamp-posts andhouse-walls. They begged his pardon, and then they began again, andshouted and roared anew. Since the gale which blew down the poet ----'schimneys and put him to the expense of rebuilding them, no joke sogenerally satisfactory had been offered to the community. My friend had, in his time, achieved the reputation of a wit by going about and andsaying, "Did you know ----'s chimneys had blown down?" and he had nowhimself the pleasure of causing the like quality of wit in others. 

Having abandoned the hope of getting anything out of the people who hadsold him Billy, he was for a time the prey of an inert despair, in whichhe had not even spirit to repine at the disorder of a universe in whichhe could not find a horse. No horses were now offered to him, for it hadbecome known throughout the trade that he had bought a horse. He hadtherefore to set about counteracting this impression with what feeblepowers were left him. Of the facts of that period he remembers withconfusion and remorse the trouble to which he put the owner of thepony-horse Pansy, whom he visited repeatedly in a neighboring town, at aloss of time and money to himself, and with no result but to embarrassPansy's owner in his relations with people who had hired him and did notwish him sold. Something of the old baffling mystery hung over Pansy'swhereabouts; he was with difficulty produced, and when _en evidence_ hewas not the Pansy my friend had expected. He paltered with his regrets;he covered his disappointment with what pretenses he could; and hewaited till he could telegraph back his adverse decision. His conclusionwas that, next to proposing marriage, there was no transaction of lifethat involved so many delicate and complex relations as buying a horse, and that the rupture of a horse-trade was little less embarrassing anddistressing to all concerned than a broken engagement. There was aterrible intimacy in the affair; it was alarmingly personal. He wentabout sorrowing for the pain and disappointment he had inflicted on manyamiable people of all degrees who had tried to supply him with a horse. 

"Look here, " said his neighbor, finding him in this low state, "whydon't you get a horse of the gentleman who furnishes mine?" This hadbeen suggested before, and my friend explained that he had disliked tomake trouble. His scruples were lightly set aside, and he sufferedhimself to be entreated. The fact was he was so discouraged with hisattempt to buy a horse that if any one had now given him such a horse ashe wanted he would have taken it. 

One sunny, breezy morning his neighbor drove my friend over to thebeautiful farm of the good genius on whose kindly offices he had nowfixed his languid hopes. I need not say what the landscape was inmid-August, or how, as they drew near the farm, the air was enrichedwith the breath of vast orchards of early apples, --apples that no forcedfingers rude shatter from their stems, but that ripen and mellowuntouched, till they drop into the straw with which the orchard aislesare bedded; it is the poetry of horticulture; it is Art practicing thewise and gracious patience of Nature, and offering to the Market aSummer Sweeting of the Hesperides. 

The possessor of this luscious realm at once took my friend's case intoconsideration; he listened, the owner of a hundred horses, with gentleindulgence 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 takecare of himself. "

"No, " replied my friend, with the inspiration of despair. "I want ahorse that can take care of me. "

The good genius laughed, and turned the conversation. Neither he nor myfriend's neighbor was a man of many words, and like taciturn people theytalked in low tones. The three moved about the room and looked at theHispano-Roman pictures; they had a glass of sherry; from time to timesomething was casually murmured about Frank. My friend felt that he wasin good hands, and left the affair to them. It ended in a visit to thestable, where it appeared that this gentleman had no horse to sell amonghis hundred which exactly met my friend's want, but that he proposed tolend him Frank while a certain other animal was put in training for thedifficult office he required of a horse. One of the men was sent forFrank, and in the mean time my friend was shown some gaunt and gracefulthoroughbreds, and taught to see the difference between them and theplebeian horse. But Frank, though no thoroughbred, eclipsed thesepatricians when he came. He had a little head, and a neck gallantlyarched; he was black and plump and smooth, and though he carried himselfwith a petted air, and was a dandy to the tips of his hooves, hisknowing eye was kindly. He turned it upon my friend with the effect ofunderstanding _his_ case at a glance. 

It was in this way that for the rest of the long, lovely summer peacewas re-established in his heart. There was no question of buying orselling Frank; there were associations that endeared him beyond money tohis owner; but my friend could take him without price. The situation hadits humiliation for a man who had been arrogantly trying to buy a horse, but he submitted with grateful meekness, and with what grace Heavengranted him; and Frank gayly entered upon the peculiar duties of hisposition. His first duty was to upset all preconceived notions of theadvantage of youth in a horse. Frank was not merely not coming seven ornine, but his age was an even number, --he was sixteen; and it was hisowner's theory, which Frank supported, that if a horse was well used hewas a good horse till twenty-five. 

The truth is that Frank looked like a young horse; he was a dandywithout any of the ghastliness which attends the preservation of youthin old beaux of another species. When my friend drove him in therehabilitated phaeton he felt that the turn-out was stylish, and helearned to consult certain eccentricities of Frank's in the satisfactionof his pride. One of these was a high reluctance to be passed on theroad. Frank was as lazy a horse--but lazy in a self-respectful, æstheticway--as ever was; yet if he heard a vehicle at no matter how greatdistance behind him (and he always heard it before his driver), hebrightened with resolution and defiance, and struck out with speed thatmade competition difficult. If my friend found that the horse behind waslikely to pass Frank, he made a merit of holding him in. If they met ateam, he lay back in his phaeton, and affected not to care to be goingfaster than a walk, any way. 

One of the things for which he chiefly prized Frank was his skill inbacking and turning. He is one of those men who become greatly perturbedwhen required to back and turn a vehicle; he cannot tell (till too late)whether he ought to pull the right rein in order to back to the left, or_vice versa_; he knows, indeed, the principle, but he becomes paralyzedin its application. Frank never was embarrassed, never confused. Myfriend had but to say, "Back, Frank!" and Frank knew from the nature ofthe ground how far to back and which way to turn. He has thus extricatedmy friend from positions in which it appeared to him that no earthlypower could relieve him. 

In going up hill Frank knew just when to give himself a rest, and atwhat moment to join the party in looking about and enjoying theprospect. He was also an adept in scratching off flies, and had aprecision in reaching an insect anywhere in his van with one of his rearhooves which few of us attain in slapping mosquitoes. This actionsometimes disquieted persons in the phaeton, but Frank knew perfectlywell what he was about, and if harm had happened to the people under hischarge my friend was sure that Frank could have done anything short ofapplying arnica and telegraphing to their friends. His varied knowledgeof life and his long experience had satisfied him that there were veryfew things to be afraid of in this world. Such womanish weaknesses asshying and starting were far from him, and he regarded the boisterousbehavior of locomotives with indifference. He had not, indeed, thevirtue of one horse offered to my friend's purchase, of standing, unmoved, with his nose against a passing express train; but he wascertainly not afraid of the cars. 

Frank was by no means what Mr. Emerson calls a mush of concession; hewas not merely amiable; he had his moments of self-assertion, histouches of asperity. It was not safe to pat his nose, like the erringBilly's; he was apt to bring his handsome teeth together in proximity tothe caressing hand with a sharp click and a sarcastic grin. Not that heever did, or ever would really bite. So, too, when left to stand longunder fly-haunted cover, he would start off afterwards with alarmingvehemence; and he objected to the saddle. On the only occasion when anyof my friend's family mounted him, he trotted gayly over the grasstowards the house, with the young gentleman on his back; then, withoutwarning, he stopped short, a slight tremor appeared to pass over him, and his rider continued the excursion some ten feet farther, alightinglump-wise on a bunch of soft turf which Frank had selected for hisreception. 

The summer passed, and in the comfort of Frank's possession my friendhad almost abandoned the idea of ever returning him to his owner. He hadthoughts of making the loan permanent, as something on the wholepreferable to a purchase. The drives continued quite into December, overroads as smooth and hard as any in June, and the air was delicious. Thefirst snow brought the suggestion of sleighing; but that cold weatherabout Christmas dispersed these gay thoughts, and restored my friend tovirtue. Word came from the stable that Frank's legs were swelling fromstanding so long without going out, and my friend resolved to part withan animal for which he had no use. I do not praise him for this; it wasno more than his duty; but I record his action in order to account forthe fact that he is again without a horse, and now, with the opening ofthe fine weather, is beginning once more to think of buying one. 

But he is in no mood of arrogant confidence. He has satisfied himselfthat neither love nor money is alone adequate to the acquisition: thefates also must favor it. The horse which Frank's owner has had intraining may or may not be just the horse he wants. He does not know; hehumbly waits; and he trembles at the alternative of horses, mysticallysummoned from space, and multitudinously advancing upon him, parrot-mouthed, pony-gaited, tender for'a'd, and traveling wide behind.