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

in his pedigree, with Arabian
blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was as he drew the

deacon and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with
a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely
and peculiar that the smart village chaps, riding along in their jaunty
turn-outs, used to chaff the good deacon on the character of the steed,
and satirically challenge him to a brush. The deacon always took the
badinage in good part, although he inwardly said, more than once, "If I
ever get a good chance, when there ain't too many around, I'll go up to
the turn of the road beyond the church and let Jack out on them;" for
Dick had given him a hint of the horse's history, and 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