People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1895 — MR. WIGGLESWORTH. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MR. WIGGLESWORTH.

HERE it is!” gleefully cried Mr. Wlgglesworth, running to the window. Mrs. Wigglesworth followed in a flutter. It was her birthday, and she’d been hoping since morning that her husband would remember it. She saw a fat, red-faced

man, leading a tall sorrel horse into the yard. “What—what is it, Ellery?” she asked, in a ini Id wonderment. “What is It?” echoed Mr. Wigglesworth, smartly, “it’s a horse, of course. Wha’ dye s’pose it was—a boiled dinner? Thought the pian was leading a farm mortgage, did’t you?” ’ “And did you get it for me?” chirped Mrs. Wlgglesworth, clapping her hands. “Oh, how good of you, Ellery, to remember that it was my birthday!” So she kissed her husband on his whiskers—women love to kiss their husbands on their whiskers—and, putting an apron over her head, v she followed him out of doors, v The tall sorrel horse had his nose in the air and was wrinkling his lips back over his forehead in a peculiar fashion. Now and then he Would thrust one foot out toward the horizon in an impromptu way, and look disappointed when the red-faced man turned out to be elsewhere. “Where’ll I put him?” asked the redfaced man. He also had a hoarse voice that rumbled, and at the sound of which the tall horse would stand up in the air till he felt the red-faced man’s fat form at the end of the halter, and then he would come down again, reaching for the red-faced man as he did so, but, unfortunately, missing him again. After some trouble the animal was got into a stall fn the little stable and the red-faced man went away, while the hired girl came out and gathered up the lineful of clothes that had been cast down and stepped on. “You see, it is this way,” Mr. Wigglesworth explained, as they were eating supper. “I thought it would be a good thing for you to have a horse this spring and get outdoors more. So I went to a man I know and told him just what I wanted, and he’s sent up just the thing—a woman’s driving horse—one that a child can handle. Quite a surprise, wasn’t it?” he added, with the pride that a man takes in doing a thing without consulting his wife. “Oh, it’s too delightful for anything!” cooed Mrs. Wlgglesworth. “But do you think I can drive him? Doesn’t he seem rather—er—tall? Not so awfully tall,” she hastened to add, noting her husband’s falling countenance, “but—but—just ” “Oh, yes, of course," said Mr. Wlgglesworth, holding his knife and fork on end and addressing the .sideboard, “he’s too tall. I oughter thought of

that. Might have looked around and found one with short legs, so the hired girl could go over him with the carpetsweeper. That’s the kind of horse for us!” They talked the matter over at length after supper. Mr. Wigglesworth said he was going to take care of the animal himself, as what he needed in the spring anyway was exercise, to work the accumulated sluggishness of winter out of his blood —out of Mr. Wigglesworth’s blood. Mrs. Wigglesworth said she was going to learn to put the bridle on him—onto the horse —without standing on a chair, and afternoons, she said, she would drive around by the office and bring her husband home to supper, for she knew how tired he must be after a hard 1 day’s work. There was considerable pawing around in the stable during the night. “Don’t you think you best take the lantern and go and see if everything is all right?” Mrs. Wigglesworth suggested. “Perhaps his blanket has slipped off.” “Well, it'll stay slipped off for all of me,” said her husband. “Want me td go out and get stepped on, don’t ye? Think it would be a good idea to stir up his pillow and put a hot-water bottle to his feet, I s’pose. Guess he’s used to sleeping alone. Probably he’s, having strange dreams, first time in a new stable, so.” This conceit so amused Mr. Wigglesworth that he lay awake a long time laughing at it. But early in the morning, just as the first rays of dawn were slanting downward over Sawyer’s barn, there was a succession of tremendous noises that called Mr. Wigglesworth hastily from bed. and.,he rushed, half dressed, toward the stable. When Mrs. Wigglesworth, soon after, got there, her blood froze with horror at the sight that met her gaze. The tall sorrel horse had his two front legs over the edge of the stall, and with his neck stretched to tlje farthest limits of the halter wa§ making frantic gestures toward Mr. Wigglesworth. who had climbed hastily onto a large feed-box in the corner, and was convulsively clinging to the wall, with a look on his face that his wife had never seen there before. "Oh, Ellery!” she screamed, with a woman’s ready presence of mind; “comi Away instantly!” . . “Come away!” shouted Mr - Wigglesworth, making himself still flatter against the the sorrel horse essayed another g/ab and tore off one of his suspenders. “Oh, of course—-that's it —that’s all I want to do—just wave my hand to the conductor and get aboard, and ring two bells and go ahead!

Wouldn’t have thought If you hadn’t—wow!” and he fetched another shriek as the sorrel stretched the halter an added Inch and snorted a cupful of foam down Mr. Wigglesworth’s .neck. - “What ye standing there for?” he yelled. “Don’t ye see I can’t move without losing my life and all I’ve got on?” “What shall I do!” wailed his wife, wringing her hands. “Do? Why get an axe and chop his blamed head off! Go and get a wood mger and bore a hole in him somewhere, and see if that won’t take his attention! Go!—” Mrs. Wigglesworth was a woman who could be roused to momentous situations. She came down from the stairs and waved her apron gently. “Shoo!” she said to the sorrel horse. “That’s it!” her husband cried, “that’s the way to shoe a horse!” and ghastly as the humor seemed to be, he found himself smiling at it. But his wonder redoubled when the sorrel horse, after looking at Mrs. Wigglesworth for a moment with a surprised air, slipped demurely down from the edge of the stall and began scratching his neck reflectively on the manger. “There you are,” said Mrs. Xyigglesworth, climbing down from the box and cautiously approaching the stall. The animal had his eyes closed, and Mr. Wigglesworth, as he took hold of,the halter, remembering his suspender, cpuld not forbear giving It a vicious little jerk. What followed Mrs. Wigglesworth explained to the doctors. The tall sorrel, she said, when he felt the jerk, seemed to turn and shot a hasty but astonished look at her husband. Mr. Wlgglesworth’s hands appeared to be glued to the halter, she said, for when the sorrel stood up on his hind legs and walked out of the stall, Mr. Wigglesworth came with him, swinging back and forth like the pendulum to a clock, only faster. When the sorrel got out on the barn floor, he looked around for Mrs. Wlgglesworth, but failing to discover her, at first, he performed a few complicated dance movements, such as a circus horse makes, leaving portions of Mr. Wigglesworth’s clothing and cuticle upon the studding and rafters of the st-able as he went along. Then he put his hands around that gentleman and charged out of doors. The hired girl had just time to look over her shoulder and see the procession coming, and then drop her clothes basket and crawl under the stoop. When the sorrel horse came down again, missing the hired girl by an inch, he put his off hind foot through the clothes basket and bore it away with him. It made one of the best items of news the local papers ever had, and even got copied into a city dally with cuts. People coming out of their houses would see Mr. Wlgglesworth every few minutes going into the air, and then coming down again, closely followed by the sorrel horse, 1 with his leg thrust through the basket, and accumulating mud which ever, and anon he would shake off upon the bystanders as he went hustling past. Half an hour later Mr. Wigglesworth climbed slowly up the stoop, a fragment of the halter, apparently forgotten, showing in his hand. “My darling, darting Ellery?” sobbed his wife, with a pale face, tdttering forward. “Don’t ye fall on me!” warned Mr. Wigglesworth, the passionate lines <fti his face growing deeper; “don’t ye come whining around here asking for any more family horses warranted to stand without hitching! The kind of family horse you want is a gentle, long-eared donkey, and blamed if I don’t wish you’d got one before you ever saw me!” And in explaining it afterward to the woman across the way, Mrs. Wlgglesworth said: “It did seem queer that Ellery should lay it all onto her, when the horse was just as much of a surprise to her as it was to anybody especially Mr. Wigglesworth.”

“AND CHARGED OUT OF DOORS.”