How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Years | Page 7

told him "he could knock the spots out of thirty," and wickedly urged the deacon to take the shine out of them airy chaps some of these days.
Such was the horse, then, that the deacon had ahead of him and the old-fashioned sleigh when, with the parson alongside, he struck into the principal street of the village.
New Year's day is a lively day in many country villages, and on this bright one especially, as the sleighing was perfect, everybody was out. Indeed, it had got noised abroad that certain trotters of local fame were to be on the street that afternoon and, as the boys worded it, "There would be heaps of fun going on." So it happened that everybody in town, and many who lived out of it, were on that particular street, and just at the hour, too, when the deacon came to the foot of it, so that the walk on either side was lined darkly with lookers-on and the smooth snow path between the two lines looked like a veritable home-stretch on a race day.
[Illustration: "_Hillow, Deacon, aren't you going to shake out Old Shamble-Heels, to-day?_"]
Now, when the deacon had reached the corner of the main street and turned into it, it was at that point where the course terminated and the "brushes" were ended, and at the precise moment when the dozen or twenty horses that had come flying down were being pulled up preparatory to returning at a slow gait to the customary starting point at the head of the street a half mile away. So the old-fashioned sleigh was quickly surrounded by the light, fancy cutters of the rival racers and Old Jack was shambling along in the midst of the high-spirited and smoking nags that had just come down the stretch.
"Hillow, deacon," shouted one of the boys, who was driving a trim-looking bay, and who had crossed the line at the ending of the course second only to the pacer that could "speed like lightning," as the boys said; "Hillow, deacon, ain't you going to shake out old shamble-heels and show us fellows what speed is, to-day?" And the merry-hearted chap, son of the principal lawyer of the place, laughed heartily at his challenge, while the other drivers looked at the great angular steed that, without check, was walking carelessly along, with his head held down, ahead of the old sleigh and its churchly occupants.
"I don't know but what I will," answered the deacon, good-naturedly; "I don't know but what I will, if the parson don't object, and you won't start off too quick to begin with; for this is New Year's and a little extra fun won't hurt any of us, I reckon."
"Do it! do it! we'll hold up for you," answered a dozen merry voices. "Do it, deacon, it'll do old shamble-heels good to go a ten-mile-an-hour gait for once in his life, and the parson needn't fear of being scandalized by any speed you'll get out of him, either," and the merry-hearted chaps haw-hawed as men and boys will when everyone is jolly and fun flows fast.
And so, with any amount of good-natured chaffing from the drivers of the "fast uns," and from many that lined the roads, too,--for the day gave greater liberty than usual to bantering speech,--the speedy ones paced slowly up to the head of the street with Old Jack shambling demurely in the midst of them.
But the horse was a knowing old fellow and had "scored" at too many races not to know that the "return" was to be leisurely taken; and, indeed, he was a horse of independence and of too even, perhaps of too sluggish a temperament to waste himself in needless action; but he had the right stuff in him and hadn't forgotten his early training, either, for when he came to the "turn," his head and tail came up, his eyes brightened, and, with a playful movement of his huge body, without the least hint from the deacon, he swung himself and the cumbrous old sleigh into line and began to straighten himself for the coming brush.
Now, Jack was, as I have said, a horse of huge proportions, and needed "steadying" at the start, but the good deacon had no experience with the "ribbons," and was, therefore, utterly unskilled in the matter of driving. And so it came about that Old Jack was so confused at the start that he made a most awkward and wretched appearance in his effort to get off, being all "mixed up," as the saying is, so much so that the crowd roared at his ungainly efforts and his flying rivals were twenty rods away before he had even got started. But at last he got his huge body in a straight line and, leaving his