Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1876 — Taking a Drive. [ARTICLE]

Taking a Drive.

The hostler, as he handed Mr. Creamly i the reins, looked dubiously at his goldbowed spectacles, and asked him in rather a pertinent (impertinent, according to Mr. Creamly, would perhaps be the better" adjective) tone if he was used to driving; and it was with vivid recollections of the family horses oyer whose back he had . flicked the braided lash in boyhood’s sunny hours that he assumed a look of lofty surprise as he answered: “ Certainly, my man—let go of ’his head.” There are horses and horses. The geometrical stetd of Mr. Oliver Creamly’s childhood, whose back bore a singular resemblance to the venerable hair trunk which was in the attic, was impervious to flagellation, and indeed Oliver thought he used rather to enjoy it, except when it roused him from the sweet slumbers in which he often indulged in conveying him to town. But this horse of -which w r e now speak was an equine fiend, and Mr. Creamly had hardly given the order to the hostler, as above stated, before he repented his rashness, and but for pride would have exclaimed, “ Catch hold of his head!” For he immediately took occasion to erect himself in a sudden manner upon his hind legs, and the thought flitted through Mr. Creamly’s agonized brain, what if he should fall over backward and break me somewhere?

Mr. Creamly’s wife was with him, and it is a characteristic feature of her sex that her first remark, after she had ejaculated the words, “Land of compassion!” were, “ There, I knew it wouldbe just so!”—a remark by no means calculated to soothe the dominant passions surging beneath Creamly’s single-breasted waistcoat. But when the gallant steed had once more retouched his native earth, in a slang but expressive phrase, he “ got up and dusted” to that extent which reduced Mr. Creamly’s skill as a driver to merely a frantic holding on with the hands to the reins and letting him “dust,” which he did most liberally. Mrs. Creamly, with the usual sublimity of heroism that develops itself in the sex under most trying circumstances, said she guessed that she’d get out, as she saw that her spouse didn’t appear to know much about driving; but as he braced his feet anew and said: “Whoa—gently—good horsie!” he indicated to her, withunmarital sternness, that if she didn’t keep her mouth closed she might lose her false teeth. Creamly concluded he must have been going about seven miles a minute when me dreadful beast stopped suddenly and unexpectedly, at the same time executing a sidewise jump, which is called “ shying.” The cause was a wheelbarrow by the roadside propelled by a small boy; the effect was a propulsion of Mr. Oliver Creamly’s frame toward the dasher of the carriage, and the contact of his wife’s head with his spinal column.

Her remark’s for obvious reasons we forbear to repeat, but they were suggestive of a total loss of temper. One of theflowers of speech she used was “idiotic old fool!” Perhaps she referred to the horse, but judging from subsequent personal allusions this might be open to doubt. And then the horse stood still in the dry ditch by the roadside, occasionally lobbing around, as Creamly remarked: “Back! back! sir!” with a pendulous motion of the under lip which was the nearest approach to a horse-laugh that waa ever seen, and which at the same time suggested derision. Then Creamly pulled on the reins, at first gently; and as his angry passions surmounted his fears he pulled with a vehemence which,if thereinsdidnotbreak, gave fair promise of drawing the beast through the dasher. “ Take the whip to him,’ said Mrs. C., with irritability apparent in her voice; and he did so, not without misgivings, however, as gratuitous advice from tha same source had occasionally brought him to grief. Fortunately his wife sat down on the side of his head as the buggy went over. Perhaps she had a vague idea that he was the horse and she was holding him down, but she was mistaken, for that sagacious animal was making excellent time toward the livery-stable, and, had the remains of the vehicle which he was propelling been right side up, we have no doubt but that he would have reached that haven of repose before the news of the mishap. “I hope you’re satisfied now!” said Mrs. Cwamly, with an intense calmness, born oi suppressed wrath and despair, as she shook the dust from her garments and felt of her back-hair. Creamly buttoned up his coat to hide his shirt-bossom, which was in rags, scooped a thimbleful of mud from his left eye, and shook some loose gravel from his left ear; Wiped tlie blood from his nose with his torn coatsleeve, and said that he was, perfectly, and asked her, with a show of asperity and a scratched face, what she would have done if she had been with an unskillful driver, a question she was too much dazed to answer, though the matter has been referred to by her several times since; but as she is somewhat given to hasty figures of speech, we will drop the subject. The stable-keeper drove up, with a team, and asked Creamly if he knew what he’d done, as he helped him in. Creamly thought the question superfluous, as he looked at his damaged clothing, and thought of the topics of conversation his wife would indulge in during the long winter evenings after he had retired; but he calmly said he thought he knew, and asked the man why he gave him such a horse to drive. The stable-keeper was a man fluent of speech and with an unpleasant readiness of profanity—but the gist of his conversation was just this: that he thought any fool could drive a stable horse that wimmen had driv for nigh seven year. As Creamly remarked in the beginning of the discourse, he thought so, too, and so he told the man of the stable, but still he did not appear satisfied. Creamly has borrowed $lO6 and paid the bill, but is more and more convinced that walking is a healthy exercise, and that to so much driving and riding are due the lassitude and general debility of the bloated aristocracy.— Boston Common, dal Bulletin.