“Figuratively speaking,” I replied, “I may have been at sea all my life, but not in reality. Is not,” I continued, parodying Shylock’s speech—“Is not a horse an animal? Hath not a horse feet, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with good oats, oftentimes hurt by the whip? Subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?”
The man scratched his head, looked puzzled, and we did not deal.
But, dear reader, were I to tell one-tenth part of the woes I endured before I got horsed and while still tossed on the ocean of uncertainty and buffeted by the adverse winds of friendly advice, your kindly heart would bleed for me.
I believe my great mistake lay in listening to every body. One-half of the inhabitants of our village had horses to sell, the other half knew where to find them.
“You’ll want two, you know,” one would say.
I believed that I would need two.
“One large cart-horse will be ample,” said another.
I believed him implicitly.
“I’d have a pole and two nags,” said one.
“I’d have two nags and two pair of shafts,” said another.