Adopting an Abandoned Farm | Page 8

that "a well-known Boston poetess had purchased the
Britton Farm, and was fitting up the old homestead for city boarders!" I
couldn't import a few hens, invest in a new dog, or order a lawn mower,
but a full account would grace the next issue of all the weeklies. I
sympathized with the old woman who exclaimed in desperation:
"Great Jerusalem, ca'nt I stir, Without a-raisin' some feller's fur?"
At last I suspected the itinerant butcher of doing double duty as a
reporter, and found that he "was engaged by several editors to pick up
bits of news for the press" as he went his daily rounds. "But this," I
exclaimed, "is just what I don't want and can't allow. Now if you should
drive in here some day and discover me dead, reclining against yonder
noble elm, or stark at its base, surrounded by my various pets, don't
allude to it in the most indirect way. I prefer the funeral to be strictly

private. Moreover, if I notice another 'item' about me, I'll buy of your
rival." And the trouble ceased.
But the horses! Still they came and went. I used to pay my friend the
rubicund surgeon to test some of these highly recommended animals in
a short drive with me.
One pronounced absolutely unrivaled was discovered by my wise
mentor to be "watch-eyed," "rat-tailed," with a swollen gland on the
neck, would shy at a stone, stand on hind legs for a train, with various
other minor defects. I grew fainthearted, discouraged, cynical, bitter.
Was there no horse for me? I became town-talk as "a drefful fussy old
maid who didn't know her own mind, and couldn't be suited no way."
I remember one horse brought by a butcher from West Bungtown. It
was, in the vernacular, a buck-skin. Hide-bound, with ribs so prominent
they suggested a wash-board. The two fore legs were well bent out at
the knees; both hind legs were swelled near the hoofs. His ears nearly
as large as a donkey's; one eye covered with a cataract, the other deeply
sunken. A Roman nose, accentuated by a wide stripe, aided the pensive
expression of his drooping under lip. He leaned against the shafts as if
he were tired.
"There, Marm," said the owner, eying my face as an amused expression
stole over it; "ef you don't care for style, ef ye want a good, steddy
critter, and a critter that can go, and a critter that any lady can drive,
there's the critter for ye!"
I did buy at last, for life had become a burden. An interested neighbor
(who really pitied me?) induced me to buy a pretty little black horse. I
named him "O.K."
After a week I changed to "N.G."
After he had run away, and no one would buy him, "D.B."
At last I succeeded in exchanging this shying and dangerous creature
for a melancholy, overworked mare at a livery stable. I hear that "D.B."

has since killed two I-talians by throwing them out when not
sufficiently inebriated to fall against rocks with safety.
And my latest venture is a backer.
Horses have just as many disagreeable traits, just as much individuality
in their badness, as human beings. Under kind treatment, daily petting,
and generous feeding, "Dolly" is too frisky and headstrong for a lady to
drive.
"Sell that treacherous beast at once or you will be killed," writes an
anxious friend who had a slight acquaintance with her moods.
I want now to find an equine reliance whose motto is "Nulla vestigia
retrorsum," or "No steps backward."
I have pasted Mr. Hale's famous motto, "Look forward and not back,"
over her stall--but with no effect. The "Lend a Hand" applies to those
we yell for when the backing is going on.
By the way, a witty woman said the other day that men always had the
advantage. A woman looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt;
Bellamy looked back and made sixty thousand dollars.
Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt, in his amusing book "Five Acres too Much"
gives even a more tragic picture, saying: "My experience of horseflesh
has been various and instructive. I have been thrown over their heads
and slid over their tails; have been dragged by saddle, stirrups, and
tossed out of wagons. I have had them to back and to kick, to run and to
bolt, to stand on their hind feet and kick with their front, and then
reciprocate by standing on their front and kicking with their hind feet....
I have been thrown much with horses and more by them."
"Horses are the most miserable creatures, invariably doing precisely
what they ought not to do; a pest, a nuisance, a bore." Or, as some one
else puts it:
"A horse at its