Autobiographies; Boys -- Biography; Country life; New England
This catching the horse, perhaps two of them, was very good fun
usually, and would have broken the Sunday if the horse had not been
wanted for taking the family to meeting. It was so peaceful and still
in the pasture on Sunday morning; but the horses were never so playful,
the colts never so frisky. Round and round the lot the boy went,
calling, in an entreating Sunday voice, "Jock, jock, jock, jock," and
shaking his salt-dish, while the horses, with heads erect, and shaking
tails and flashing heels, dashed from corner to corner, and gave the
boy a pretty good race before he could coax the nose of one of them
into his dish. The boy got angry, and came very near saying "dum it,"
but he rather enjoyed the fun, after all.
The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the set
of his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory of
the Sunday-school verses; and what a wild confusion there was through
the house in getting off for meeting, and how he was kept running
hither and thither, to get the hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan, or the
best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the bunch
of caraway seed. Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon load of the
deacon's folks, had gone shambling past, head and tail drooping, clumsy
hoofs kicking up clouds of dust, while the good deacon sat jerking the
reins in an automatic way, and the "women-folks" patiently saw the dust
settle upon their best summer finery. Wagon after wagon went along
the sandy road, and when our boy's family started, they became part
of a long procession, which sent up a mile of dust and a pungent if
not pious smell of buffalo-robes. There were fiery horses in the train
which had to be held in, for it was neither etiquette nor decent to
pass anybody on Sunday. It was a great delight to the farmer-boy to see
all this procession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other
boys, who leaned over the wagon-seats for that purpose. Occasionally
a boy rode behind, with his back to the family, and his pantomime was
always something wonderful to see, and was considered very daring and
wicked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account