Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1915 — SEEING LIFE with JOHN HENRY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SEEING LIFE with JOHN HENRY

by George V.Hobart

John Henry Goes Sleighriding

SAY! isn’t it great to get all wrapped up in fur robes in a fine old sleigh and let a fine old horse drag you over the fine old snow on a fine old country road? Answer: It is. It’s great if all the ingredients are properly proportioned, but nine times out of ten something goes wrong with the horse or the sleigh or the snow or the road and you find yourself four miles from nowhere, sitting on an ice hummodk and screaming for transportation, while the harsh winds of winter' are biting their initials on your southern exposure. Peaches and I went to visit Uncle Peter and Aunt Martha upstate, and when friend wife found the ground covered with Bnow, right away she began to sit up and beg a sleigh ride. She said that the sweet jingle-jangle of the bells would bring rest to her nerves after a season of trying to cross the streets in New York without being struck by a taxicab, so Uncle Peter told me where to find a livery stable and off I hiked. Anyone who has never lived in a semi-rural town will doubtless recall what handsome specimens of equine perfection may be found in the local livery stable —not. The liveryman in the town where Uncle Peter lives is named Henlopen Laffenwell, and he looks the part. I judged from the excited manner in which he grabbed my deposit money that he had a note falling due next day. Then Henlopen shut his eyes, counted six, turned around twice, multiplied the day of the week by 19, subtracted 7, and the answer was a creamcolored horse with four pink feet and a frightened face. The gargoyle gazed at me sadly, sighed deeply and then backed up into the shafts of a sleigh that looked something like a barber’s chair and something like the tumbril Marie Antoinette used the afternoon she went to the guillotine. The liveryman said that the name of the horse was Lohengrin, because it seemed to go better in German. I drove Lohengrin up to Uncle Peter’s residence and all the way there we ran neck to neck with a coal cart. Lohengrin used to be a fast horse, but quite some time ago he stopped eating his wild oats and now leads a slower life. When I reached the gate I whistled for Peaches, because I was afraid to get out and leave Lohengrin alone. He might go to sleep and fall down. Friend wife came out, looked at the rig and then went back in the house and bade everybody an affecting farewell. There were tears in her eyes when she came out and climbed into the sleigh. She said she was crying because Aunt Martha wasn’t there to see us driving away and have the laugh of her life. We started off and we were rushing along the road, passing a fence and

overtaking a telegraph pole every once in a while, when suddenly we heard behind us a very insistent choof-choef-choof-choof! “It’s one of those Careless Wagons,” I whispered to Peaches, and then we both looked at Lohengrin to see if there was a mental struggle going on in his forehead, but he was rushing onward with his head down, watching his feet to make sure they didn’t step on each other. Choof-choof-choof came the Torpedo Destroyer behind us, and I wrapped the reins around my wrist, in case Lohengrin should get want to print horseshoes all over the automobile. The next minute the machine passed us, going at the rate of 14 constables an hour, and as it did so Lohengrin stopped still and seemed to be biting Ha iip S with suppressed emotion. 1 coaxed him to proceed in English, in Spanish and Italian, and then in a pale blue language of my own, hut he just stood there and bit his lips. I believe if he had possessed finger walla he would have bitten them too. I gave the reins to friend wife with instructions how to act if the horse started, and I jumped out to argue with him. 1 just when I had picked out a good

sized hunk of ice which was to be my argument, Lohengrin came out of his trance and started off, but Peaches forgot her instructions and spoke above a whisper and he stopped again. Then I took the reins, cracked the whip, shouted a few paragraphs of the language General Villa uses in Mexico when he captures a Federal soldier, "and away we rushed like the wind —when it wasn’t blowing hard. The hours flew by and we must have gone at least half a mile, when another Kerosene Wagon came bouncing toward us from the opposite direction. In it was a happy party of ladies and gentlemen, who were laughing and chatting about some people they had just run over. Lohengrin saw them coming and stopped still in the middle of the road. Then he hung his head as low as he could, and I believe if that horse had been supplied with hands he would have put them over his ears. The people in the Bubble began to shout at us, and I began to shout at the horse, and friend wife began to shout at me, while Lohengrin stood there and scratched his left ankle with his right heel. Then the machine made a sudden jump to the right and hiked by us at the rate of about a SIOO fine, while the lady passengers in the cabin de luxe stood up and began to hand out medals to each other because they didn’t run us down. Ten minutes later Lohengrin came to and looked over his shoulder at us with a smile as serene as the morning and once more resumed his mad career onward, ever onward. We were now about two miles from home, and suddenly we came across a big red touring car which stood in front of a roadhouse, sneezing inwardly and sobbing with all its corrugated heart. Lohengrin saw the machine before we did. He knew there must be an automobile somewhere near, because •he stopped still and quietly passed away. I jumped out and tried to lead him by she Coroner’s Delight, but he planted his four feet in the middle of the road and refused to be coaxed. I took the horse by the ear and whispered therein just what I thought about him, but he wouldn't talk back. I told him my wife’s honor was at stake, but he looked my wife over and his lips carried with an expression which seemed to say, “Impossible.” It was all off with us. Lohengrin simply wouldn’t move until that sobbing Choo Choo Wagon had left the neighborhood, so I went inside the roadhouse to find the owner. I found him. He consisted of a German chauffeur and eight bottles of beer. -* When I explained the pitiful situation to him the chauffeur swallowed two bottles of beer and began to cry. Then he told the waiter to call him at 7:30, and he put his head down on

the table and went to sleep with his face in a cute little nest of hard-boiled cigarettes. I rushed to the telephone and called up the liveryman, but before I could think of a word strong enough to fit the occasion he whispered over the wire: “I know your voice, Mr. Henry. I suppose Lohengrin is waiting for you outside.” Forthwith I tried to tell that liveryman Just what I thought about him and Lohengrin, but the telephone girl short-circuited my remarks and they came back and set fire to the woodwork. "My, my I” I could hear the liveryman saying. "Lohengrin’s hesitation must be the result of the epidemic of automobiles which is now raging over our country roads. The automobile has a strange efTect on Lohengrin. It seems to cover him with a pause and gives him inflammation of the speed.” I thought of poor Peaches shivering out there in that comedy sleigh staring at a dreaming horse, while in front of her a Red Devil Wagon complained Internally and shook its tonneau at her, and once more I jolted that liveryman with a few verbal twisters. "Don’t get excited,” he whispered hack over the phone. "Lohengrin is a pew idea in horses. ‘Whenever he

meets an automobile he goes to sleep and tries to forget it. Isn’t that better than running away and dragging you to a hospital? There must be something about an automobile that affects Lohengrin’s heart. I think it is the gasoline. The odor from the gasoline seems to penetrate his mind to the region of his memory and he forgets to move. Lohengrin is a fine horse, with a most lovable disposition, but when the air becomes charged with gasoline he forgets his duty and falls asleep at the switch."

I went out and explained to my wife that Lohengrin was a victim of the gasoline habit, and that he would never leave that spot until the Bubble went away, and that the Bubble couldn’t go away until the chauffeur woke up, and that the chauffeur couldn’t wake up until his mind had digested a lot of wood alcohol, so she jumped out of the trick sleigh for the purpose of telling Lohengrin just what she thought about him. At that moment somebody opened the folding doors in the barn just ahead of us, and Lohengrin, with a withering glance at friend wife and a shrug of his shoulders in my direction, tippy-toed to cover and left us flat Ostler Joe, the charge d’affaires of the barn, tried to stop Lohengrin and ask for his credentials, but the equine onion brushed right by and himself and the droshky in the middle of the barn floor, where he promptly went to sleep again. Just as we hurried away to flag an approaching trolley car I heard Ostler Joe say to the slumbering Lohengrin:

“Wake up, you doggone ol’ rabbit, wake up and git out’n our bam. I know you, dag gone you, even if you be disguised by hidin’ behind that thar fourposter bed on runners. Wake up, you ol’ ijit! You be Henlopen Laffenwell’s accomplice in crime, been’t ye? Waal, you git right out’n our barn an’ do your sleepin’ where you belong. Dag gone if you kin use our bam to give your imitations of Rip Van Winkle. Come on now, git!” When we finally reaehed home Aunt Martha asked us how we enjoyed the sleighride. “The scenery was perfectly lovely—it was so stationary,” Peaches answered, with chattering teeth. “One of the best walks I ever had,” I said as I put both feet in the fireplace to warm up. Lohengrin, eh? To make him go Mr. Wagner would have to set him to ragtime.

“Tippy-Toed to Cover and Left Us Flat"

The Gargoyle Gazed at Me!