Adopting An Abandoned Farm - Kate Sanborn (new books to read txt) 📗

younger daughter cried, 'Why, papa, it's the back of a hair-brush!' And it was."

An auctioneer usually tries to be off-hand, waggish, and brisk - a cross between a street peddler and a circus clown, with a hint of the forced mirth of the after-dinner speaker. Occasionally the jokes are good and the answers from the audience show the ready Yankee wit.

Once an exceedingly fat man, too obese to descend from his high wagon, bought an immense dinner bell and he was hit unmercifully. A rusty old fly-catcher elicited many remarks - as "no flies on that." I bought several chests, half full of rubbish, but found, alas! no hidden treasure, no missing jewels, no money hid away by miserly fingers and forgotten. Jake Corey, who was doing some work for me, encouraged me to hope. He said: "I hear ye patronize auctions putty reg'lar; sometimes there is a good deal to be made that way, and then ag'in there isn't. I never had no luck that way, but it's like getting married, it's a lottery! Folks git queer and put money in some spot, where they're apt to forgit all about it. Now I knew a man who bought an old hat and a sight of other stuff; jest threw in the hat. And when he got home and come to examine it ef thar warn't three hundred dollars in good bills, chucked in under the sweater!"

"You ought to git over to Mason's auction to Milldon, sure. It's day after to-morrow at nine sharp. You see he'd a fortune left him, but he run straight through it buying the goldarndest things you ever heerd tell on - calves with six legs, dogs with three eyes or two tails, steers that could be druv most as well as hosses (Barnum he got hold o' 'em and tuk 'em round with his show); all sorts o' curious fowl and every outlandish critter he could lay his hands on. 'T stands to reason he couldn't run that rig many years. Your goin's on here made me think o' Mason. He cut a wide swath for a time.

"Wall, I hope you'll come off better'n he did. He sunk such a pile that he got discouraged and took to drink; then his wife, a mighty likely woman she is (one o' the Batchelders of Dull Corner), couldn't stand it and went back to her old home, and he died ragged and friendless about a month ago. Ef I's you, I'd go over, just to take warning and hold up in time."


CHAPTER III.

BUYING A HORSE.


"And you know this Deacon Elkins to be a thoroughly reliable man in
every respect?"

"Indeed, I do," said honest Nathan Robbins. "He is the very soul of
honor; couldn't do a mean thing. I'd trust him with all I have."

"Well, I'm glad to hear this, for I'm just going to buy a horse of
him."

"A horse?"

"Yes - a horse!"

"Then I don't know anything about him!"

A TRUE TALE.

After furnishing my house in the aforesaid economical and nondescript fashion, came the trials of "planting time." This was such an unfragrant and expensive period that I pass over it as briefly as possible. I saw it was necessary in conformity with the appalling situation to alter one vowel in my Manorial Hall. The haul altogether amounted to eighteen loads besides a hundred bags of vilely smelling fertilizers. Agents for every kind of phosphates crowded around me, descanting on the needs of the old land, until I began to comprehend what the owner meant by "keeping it up." With Gail Hamilton, I had supposed the entire land of this earth to be pretty much the same age until I adopted the "abandoned." This I found was fairly senile in its worthless decrepitude.

My expenditure was something prodigious.

Yes, "planting time" was a nightmare in broad daylight, but as I look back, it seems a rosy dream, compared with the prolonged agonies of buying a horse!

All my friends said I must have a horse to truly enjoy the country, and it seemed a simple matter to procure an animal for my own use.

Livery-stable keepers, complaisant and cordial, were continually driving around the corner into my yard, with a tremendous flourish and style, chirking up old by-gones, drawing newly painted buggies, patched-up phaetons, two-seated second-hand "Democrats," high wagons, low chaises, just for me to try. They all said that seeing I was a lady and had just come among 'em, they would trade easy and treat me well. Each mentioned the <i>real value, and a much lower price, at which I, as a special favor, could secure the entire rig. Their prices were all abominably exorbitant, so I decided to hire for a season. The dozen beasts tried in two months, if placed in a row, would cure the worst case of melancholia. Some shied; others were liable to be overcome by "blind staggers"; three had the epizootic badly, and longed to lie down; one was nearly blind. At last I was told of a lady who desired to leave her pet horse and Sargent buggy in some country home during her three months' trip abroad.

Both were so highly praised as <i>just the thing that I took them on faith.

I judge that a woman can lie worse than a man about a horse!

"You will love my Nellie" she wrote. "I hate to part with her, even for the summer. She has been a famous racer in Canada - can travel easily twenty-five miles a day. Will go better at the end of the journey than at the beginning. I hear you are an accomplished driver, so I send my pet to your care without anxiety."

I sent a man to her home to drive out with this delightful treasure, and pictured myself taking long and daily drives over our excellent country roads. Nellie, <i>dear Nellie; I loved her already. How I would pet her, and how fond she would become of me. Two lumps of sugar at least, every day for her, and red ribbons for the whip. How she would dash along! A horse for me at last! About 1.45 A.M., of the next day, a carriage was heard slowly entering the yard. I could hardly wait until morning to gloat over my gentle racer! At early dawn I visited the stable and found John disgusted beyond measure with my bargain. A worn-out, tumble-down, rickety carriage with wobbling wheels, and an equally worn-out, thin, dejected, venerable animal, with an immense blood spavin on left hind leg, recently blistered! It took three weeks of constant doctoring, investment in Kendall's Spavin Cure, and consultation with an expensive veterinary surgeon, to get the whilom race horse into a condition to slowly walk to market. I understood now the force of the one truthful clause - "She will go better at the end of the drive than at the beginning," for it was well-nigh impossible to get her stiff legs started without a fire kindled under them and a measure of oats held enticingly before her. It was enraging, but nothing to after experiences. All the disappointed livery men, their complaisance and cordiality, wholly a thing of the past, were jubilant that I had been so imposed upon by some one, even if they had failed. And their looks, as they wheeled rapidly by me, as I crept along with the poor, suffering, limping "Nellie," were almost more than I could endure.

Horses were again brought for inspection, and there was a repetition of previous horrors. At last a man came from Mossgrown. He had an honest face; he knew of a man who knew of a man whose brother had just <i>the
horse for me, "sound, stylish, kind, gentle as a lamb, fast as the wind." Profiting by experience, I said I would look at it. Next day, a young man, gawky and seemingly unsophisticated, brought the animal. It looked well enough, and I was so tired. He was anxious to sell, but only because he was going to be married and go West; needed money. And he said with sweet simplicity: "Now I ain't no jockey, I ain't! You needn't be afeard of me - I say just what I mean. I want spot cash, I do, and you can have horse, carriage, and harness for $125 down." He gave me a short drive, and we did go "like the wind." I thought the steed very hard to hold in, but he convinced me that it was not so. I decided to take the creature a week on trial, which was a blow to that guileless young man. And that very afternoon I started for the long, pleasant drive I had been dreaming about since early spring.

The horse looked quiet enough, but I concluded to take my German domestic along for extra safety. I remembered his drawling direction, "Doan't pull up the reins unless you want him to go pretty lively," so held the reins rather loosely for a moment only, for this last hope wheeled round the corner as if possessed, and after trotting, then breaking, then darting madly from side to side, started into a full run. I pulled with all my might; Gusta stood up and helped. No avail. On we rushed to sudden death. No one in sight anywhere. With one Herculean effort, bred of the wildest despair, we managed to rein him in at a sharp right angle, and we succeeded in calming his fury, and tied the panting, trembling fiend to a post. Then Gusta mounted guard while I walked home in the heat and dirt, fully half a mile to summon John.

I learned that <i>that horse had never before been driven by a woman. He evidently was not pleased.

Soon the following appeared among the local items of interest in the Gooseville Clarion:

Uriel Snooks, who has been working in the cheese factory at
Frogville, is now to preside over chair number four in Baldwin's
Tonsorial Establishment on Main Street.

Kate Sanborn is trying another horse.

These bits of information in the papers were a boon to the various reporters, but most annoying to me. The Bungtown Gazetteer announced 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