MY DRIVE TO THE CLIFF.
I am wofully out of humor, and what is worse, out of pocket, and have just been settling a bill for repairs to a buggy which was knocked out of kilter on the Cliff House road the other day. At the present writing I feel that it will be some time before I take the chances of injuring another. The moon may fill her horn and wane again, the seals howl, and the ocean roar, but I will hardly indulge in the luxury of a drive to the beach for many a day to come. I had a couple of ladies with me. Splendid company ladies are—so long as they have unlimited confidence in your skill as a driver. But they try one’s patience after they lose faith, and want to get the lines in their own hands every time you chance to run a wheel into the ditch, or accidentally climb over a pig or calf. Those who were with me on that occasion are not particularly loud in their praise of my driving. The fact is, I didn’t acquit myself in a manner calculated to draw down encomiums in showers upon my head. I drove a span that day. They were called high-strung animals. But I don’t like high-strung horses any more. If they would only run along the track like a locomotive, I could hold the ribbons as gracefully as anybody; but I am very much opposed to all of their little by-plays. This getting scared at a floating thistle-down, or grasshopper swinging on a straw, is something I don’t approve of in a horse. There is no reason in it; no profit accrues from it.
But my trotters were frightened at different objects at the same moment—one at a snail peacefully pursuing his way across the road, and the other at a butterfly winging his wabbling flight along the ditch. At once they became unmanageable, and vied with each other in extravagant antics. From the first the ladies had no very exalted opinion of my manner of handling the lines. Even before we were well under way I had the misfortune to run down a calf. Then a Newfoundland dog thought to stop the buggy by taking hold of one of the hubs, but he made a mis-dive, and shoving his head between the spokes, kept us company for twenty rods without any effort on his part whatever. I also ran over a wheelbarrow loaded with bricks (the Irishman escaped with a crushed hat), and overthrew an apple woman’s stand while turning a corner. I can yet hear ringing in my ear the shouts and execrations of the old vender, when she saw the wheels mounting her baskets and squeezing the cider out of her choicest bellflowers. Until I passed the next street I could look back and see the old lady in her embarrassing situation. There she sat, caught under the broken table, and kicking about wildly in frantic efforts to free herself, while her bonnet was knocked askew by the fall and stuck on one side of her head in the most jaunty position imaginable.
SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSING.
At this point the horses became more frightened, and commenced cutting up strange didos. Things were getting badly mixed, so much so that one horse turned his head to the dasher. The ladies took a hurried view of the situation, and voting me an incompetent driver, began to desert me by back-action movements over the rear end of the buggy.
BADLY MIXED.
I shall always think that I could have managed the animals without any difficulty if they had not both been frightened at the same time. But with one bucking like a Mexican plug, evidently bent on crawling under the buggy, and the other seemingly striving to reach the stars by an invisible ladder, they were indeed difficult to control.
My companions concluded they had sufficient buggy riding for one day, and took the cars into town, while I patched up the harness as best I could, and returned to the livery stable, fully concurring with the women folks that as a driver I was not a success, and that hereafter promenades would suit me better.
