One day, when a dozen or more of the neighbors were present, and enjoying themselves in passing around the bottle, relating anecdotes, and cracking jokes, my grandfather called out in a loud tone of voice, which at once arrested the attention of all present:
“Friend Dey, I believe you pretend to believe in foreordination?”
“To be sure I do,” replied Mr. Dey.
“Well, now, suppose I should spit in your face, what would you do?” inquired my grandfather.
“I hope that is not a supposable case,” responded Mr. Dey, “for I should probably knock you down.”
“That would be very inconsistent,” replied my grandfather, exultingly; “for if I spat in your face it would be because it was foreordained I should do so: why then would you be so unreasonable as to knock me down?”
“Because it would be foreordained that I should knock you down,” replied Mr. Dey, with a smile.
The company burst into a laugh, in which my grandfather heartily joined.
My father, as well as my grandfather, was very fond of a practical joke, and he lost no occasion which offered for playing off one upon his friends and neighbors. In addition to his store, tavern, and freight-wagon business to Norwalk, he kept a small livery-stable; and on one occasion, a young man named Nelson Beers applied to him for the use of a horse to ride to Danbury, a distance of three miles. Nelson was an apprentice to the shoe-making business, nearly out of his time, was not over-stocked with brains, and lived a mile and a half east of our village. My father thought that it would be better for Nelson to make his short journey on foot than to be at the expense of hiring a horse, but he did not tell him so.
We had an old horse named “Bob.” Having reached an age beyond his teens, he was turned out in a bog lot near our house to die. He was literally a “living skeleton,”—much in the same condition of the Yankee’s nag, which was so weak his owner had to hire his neighbor’s horse to help him draw his last breath. My father, in reply to Nelson’s application, told him that the livery horses were all out, and he had none at home except a famous “race-horse,” which he was keeping in low flesh in order to have him in proper trim to win a great race soon to come off.