Thinks I, “old boy, you are sold. I said that a purpose to find you out, for I am too fond of feminine gender to make fun of them. You are a single man. If you was married, I guess you wouldn’t ask that are question.”
But I went on. “Now a horse is different, you never get tired of a good one. He don’t fizzle out1 like the rest. You like him better and better every day. He seems a part of yourself; he is your better half, your ‘halter hego’ as I heard a cockney once call his fancy gall.
1 Fizzle out. To prove a failure.
“This bein’ the case, as I was a sayin’, as soon as a man gits a new one, he wants to try him. So Parker puts Mandarin into harness, and drives away like wink for Salem, but when he came to the bridge, the old coon stopt, put forward his ears, snorted, champed his bit, and stamped his fore feet. First Parker coaxed him, but that did no good, and then he gave him the whip, and he reared straight up on eend, and nearly fell over into his waggon. A man that was crossing over at the time took him by the head to lead him, when he suddenly wheeled half round, threw him in the mud, and dragged him in the gutter, as he backed up agin the side walk all standin’. Parker then laid on the whip, hot and heavy; he gave him a most righteous lickin’. Mandarin returned blow for blow, until he kicked the waggon all to flinders.
“Well, I must say that for his new owner, he was a plucky fellow, as well as Mandarin, and warn’t agoin’ to cave in that way. So he takes him back to the livery stables, and puts him into another carriage, and off he starts agin, and thinkin’ that the horse had seen or smelt sumthen at that bridge to scare him, he tries another, when the same scene was acted over again, only he was throwed out, and had his clothes nearly tore off. Well, that afternoon, up comes Parker to me, choking with rage.
“‘Slick,’ said he, ‘that is the greatest devil of a horse I ever see. He has dashed two carriages all to shivereens, and nearly tuckard the innerds out of me and another man. I don’t think you have acted honestly by me.’
“‘Parker,’ said I, ‘don’t you use words that you don’t know the meanin’ of, and for goodness gracious sake don’t come to me to teach you manners, I beseech you, for I am a rough schoolmaster, I tell you. I answered every question you asked me, candidly, fair and square, and above board.’
“‘Didn’t you know,’ said he, ‘that no living man could git that horse across a bridge, let him do his darndest?’
“‘I did,’ said I, ‘know it to my cost, for he nearly killed me in a fight we had at the Salem Pike.’
“‘How could you then tell me, Sir, your sole reason for parting with him was, that you wanted to leave Boston and go to Charleston?’