Buying a Horse

by William Dean Howells

"The worst of it is," said the guest, "that you never can trust 'em after 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 Billy ought 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 must now be sold; it was the wreck of settled hopes, the renewed suspense of faith, 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 his place, but the only horse supplied was an aged veteran with the scratches, who must have come seven early in our era, and who, from his habit of getting about on tiptoe, must have been tender for'a'd beyond anything of my friend's previous experience. Probably if he could have waited they might have replaced Billy in time, but their next installment from the West produced nothing suited to his wants but a horse with the presence and carriage of a pig, and he preferred to let them sell Billy for what he would bring, and to trust his fate elsewhere. Billy had fallen nearly one half in value, and he brought very little—to his owner; though the new purchaser was afterwards reported 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 to try. My friend remained grieving over his own folly and carelessness, with a fond hankering for the poor little horse he had lost, and the belief that he should never find such another. Yet he was not without a philanthropist's consolation. He had added to the stock of harmless pleasures in a degree of which he could not have dreamed. All his acquaintance knew that he had bought a horse, and they all seemed now to conspire in asking him how he got on with it. He was forced to confess the truth. On hearing it, his friends burst into shouts of laughter, and smote their persons, and stayed themselves against lamp-posts and house-walls. They begged his pardon, and then they began again, and shouted and roared anew. Since the gale which blew down the poet ——'s chimneys and put him to the expense of rebuilding them, no joke so generally satisfactory had been offered to the community. My friend had, in his time, achieved the reputation of a wit by going about and and saying, "Did you know ——'s chimneys had blown down?" and he had now himself the pleasure of causing the like quality of wit in others.

Having abandoned the hope of getting anything out of the people who had sold him Billy, he was for a time the prey of an inert despair, in which he had not even spirit to repine at the disorder of a universe in which he could not find a horse. No horses were now offered to him, for it had become known throughout the trade that he had bought a horse. He had therefore to set about counteracting this impression with what feeble powers were left him. Of the facts of that period he remembers with confusion and remorse the trouble to which he put the owner of the pony-horse Pansy, whom he visited repeatedly in a neighboring town, at a loss of time and money to himself, and with no result but to embarrass Pansy's owner in his relations with people who had hired him and did not wish him sold. Something of the old baffling mystery hung over Pansy's whereabouts; he was with difficulty produced, and when en evidence he was not the Pansy my friend had expected. He paltered with his regrets; he covered his disappointment with what pretenses he could; and he waited till he could telegraph back his adverse decision. His conclusion was that, next to proposing marriage, there was no transaction of life that involved so many delicate and complex relations as buying a horse, and that the rupture of a horse-trade was little less embarrassing and distressing to all concerned than a broken engagement. There was a terrible intimacy in the affair; it was alarmingly personal. He went about sorrowing for the pain and disappointment he had inflicted on many amiable people of all degrees who had tried to supply him with a horse.

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

One sunny, breezy morning his neighbor drove my friend over to the beautiful farm of the good genius on whose kindly offices he had now fixed his languid hopes. I need not say what the landscape was in mid-August, or how, as they drew near the farm, the air was enriched with the breath of vast orchards of early apples,—apples that no forced fingers rude shatter from their stems, but that ripen and mellow untouched, till they drop into the straw with which the orchard aisles are bedded; it is the poetry of horticulture; it is Art practicing the wise and gracious patience of Nature, and offering to the Market a Summer Sweeting of the Hesperides.

The possessor of this luscious realm at once took my friend's case into consideration; he listened, the owner of a hundred horses, with gentle indulgence 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 take care of himself."

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

The good genius laughed, and turned the conversation. Neither he nor my friend's neighbor was a man of many words, and like taciturn people they talked in low tones. The three moved about the room and looked at the Hispano-Roman pictures; they had a glass of sherry; from time to time something was casually murmured about Frank. My friend felt that he was in good hands, and left the affair to them. It ended in a visit to the stable, where it appeared that this gentleman had no horse to sell among his hundred which exactly met my friend's want, but that he proposed to lend him Frank while a certain other animal was put in training for the difficult office he required of a horse. One of the men was sent for Frank, and in the mean time my friend was shown some gaunt and graceful thoroughbreds, and taught to see the difference between them and the plebeian horse. But Frank, though no thoroughbred, eclipsed these patricians when he came. He had a little head, and a neck gallantly arched; he was black and plump and smooth, and though he carried himself with a petted air, and was a dandy to the tips of his hooves, his knowing eye was kindly. He turned it upon my friend with the effect of understanding his case at a glance.