Buying a Horse | Page 8

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.
It was in this way that for the rest of the long, lovely summer peace was re-established in his heart. There was no question of buying or selling Frank; there were associations that endeared him beyond money to his owner; but my friend could take him without price. The situation had its humiliation for a man who had been arrogantly trying to buy a horse, but he submitted with grateful meekness, and with what grace Heaven granted him; and Frank gayly entered upon the peculiar duties of his position. His first duty was to upset all preconceived notions of the advantage of youth in a horse. Frank was not merely not coming seven or nine, but his age was an even number,--he was sixteen; and it was his owner's theory, which Frank supported, that if a horse was well used he was a good horse till twenty-five.
The truth is that Frank looked like a young horse; he was a dandy without any of the ghastliness which attends the preservation of youth in old beaux of another species. When my friend drove him in the rehabilitated phaeton he felt that the turn-out was stylish, and he learned to consult certain eccentricities of Frank's in the satisfaction of his pride. One of these was a high reluctance to be passed on the road. Frank was as lazy a horse--but lazy in a self-respectful, ?sthetic way--as ever was; yet if he heard a vehicle at no matter how great distance behind him (and he always heard it before his driver), he brightened with resolution and defiance, and struck out with speed that made competition difficult. If my friend found that the horse behind was likely to pass Frank, he made a merit of holding him in. If they met a team, he lay back in his phaeton, and affected not to care to be going faster than a walk, any way.
One of the things for which he chiefly prized Frank was his skill in backing and turning. He is one of those men who become greatly perturbed when required to back and turn a vehicle; he cannot tell (till too late) whether he ought to pull the right rein in order to back to the left, or vice versa; he knows, indeed, the principle, but he becomes paralyzed in its application. Frank never was embarrassed, never confused. My friend had but to say, "Back, Frank!" and Frank knew from the nature of the ground how far to back and which way to turn. He has thus extricated my friend from positions in which it appeared to him that no earthly power could relieve him.
In going up hill Frank knew just when to give himself a rest, and at what moment to join the party in looking about and enjoying the prospect. He was also an adept in scratching off flies, and had a precision in reaching an insect anywhere in his van with one of his rear hooves which few of us attain in slapping mosquitoes. This action sometimes disquieted persons in the phaeton, but Frank knew perfectly well what he was about, and if harm had happened to the people under his charge my friend was sure that Frank could have done anything short of applying arnica and telegraphing to their friends. His varied knowledge of life and his long experience had satisfied him that there were very few things to be afraid of in this world. Such womanish weaknesses as shying and starting were far from him, and he regarded the boisterous behavior of locomotives with indifference. He had not, indeed, the virtue of one horse offered to my friend's purchase, of standing, unmoved, with his nose against a passing express train; but he was certainly not afraid of the cars.
Frank was by no means what Mr. Emerson calls a mush of concession; he was not merely amiable; he had his moments of self-assertion, his touches of asperity. It was not safe to pat his nose, like the erring Billy's; he was apt to bring his handsome teeth together