Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1891 — LITTLE JIM’S COMPOSITION. , [ARTICLE]

LITTLE JIM’S COMPOSITION. ,

? THE HORSE. Arkansaw Traveller. My ma sed if I’d write a composition on the hoss, she’d give me all the jelly I could hold. I’m ten years old and big of my age, and it will take good deal of jelly, pa says. There is ever so many kinds of hosses. There is the red hoss, and the roan hoss, and the bob-tailed hoss, and the old mare, and the saw hoss, and the clothes hoss, and the salt hoss that pa et in the army, and the balky hoss, besides some other hosses. They live to be nine years old. You tell their age by their teeth, and most any man can do it. When you want to drive a hoss, you put a bit in his mouth, comb out his mane and tail and take your best girl, and say “g’lang,” and he g’langs, unless he happens to be a balky hoss, and then he starts on his behind legs, and flourishes his forward feet. Then you whip* him, and he stand on his beforward feet, and flourishes his behind legs, and if you don’t look out J'ou’ll think you’ve been struck by ightning. The hoss is the man’s best friend. He is a skeery critter, and you have to keep your eyes on him, or you’ll get upsot and have to sue the town for damages. If he got skeered, he’d just as soon run rite down over a precipice fifty thousand feet high, with his best friend clinging to the rigginm as not. The hoss eats oats, and hay, and corn, and hitching posts. He ain't 1 a very healthy animal, and he has all ! kinds" of diseases, which come mostly on his legs. This disease is called “outs.” If you buy a hoss of anybody, you’ll "always get cheated and tother feller will get rich. Hosses top their ears at girls, because girls is afraid of them, and they know it — the hosses does. I’m glad I ain’t a girl. I Tue hoss, when he’s a mule, is liable to kick you. Mules have long

ears, and awful set minds.. They’rv as contrary as Aunt Jane, and shec set up nights to plan how not to de something you wanted her to do. Aunt Jane’s got money, so I won’t say no more. I wish I had a mule, though 1 should rather have a mustang with brans on his sides, like Charley Payne’s got on his’n, and a mustang would buck Tommy Jones off over his head into the mud if he got on him! Tommy Jones is a bad boy? He let all my fish-worms loose, and they was beautiful worms, too! and my sister Minnie’s hen and rooster el ’em up! If I was goin’ to be a hoss, I should like to be a hearse hoss, which has tc go slow and look solium, and wear a Slume in his head jest as Gin’ral Jern’s does on training days! Hosses is wiith all the way from fifty cents up to five millions dollars —jest as they oan get it over the road. If I could have my choice I’d have a two-mi nit one, thoughl should ruther have a bicycle. If you whip your hoss, along comes a women thai belongs to the S. P. C. A. and arrests you. Then you swear at her, and she has you fined. Hosses is going out of fashion. Thunder and fitening is going to run the hoss car. You can always trade hosses with anybody, but it takes time and a good deal of talk. Hoss trotting is wicked, but a 10l of real good people go to hoss trots by mistake, and when they get there they stay till it’s over, so’s not to disturb talks by going out. And this is almost all I know about the hoss. ' ’. ■ .