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We know all about horse here, an’ he ain’t any high-toned, pure souled child o’ nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez you, is chock-full o’ tricks, an’ meannesses, an’ cussednesses, an’ shirkin’s, an’ monkey-shines, which he’s took over from his sire an’ his dam, an’ thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o’ goin’ crooked. Thet’s horse, an’ thet’s about his dignity an’ the size of his soul ’fore he’s been broke an’ rawhided a piece. |
This is from “Walking Delegate”, from The Day’s Work. On a hot summer’s day, up in the back pasture, a group of horses are chatting. Most of them are happy with their lot, and their work, but there is one, a ‘wall-eyed, yellow frame house of a horse’ sent up to board from a livery-stable in the town, who turns out to be an agitator, and tries to persuade the other horses to rise against Man the Oppressor, in the manner of a French revolutionary who wishes to send all the aristocrats to the guillotine, or a Bolshevik in 1917. Some of the younger horses are half-persuaded by his talk, but the older ones, who know what makes the world work, are not to be bamboozled by high-flown talk. They take exception to the yellow horse’s preaching violence, and give him a serious kicking. |
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