"Mrs. Adeler," I said, as I exhibited the purchase to her, "I do not think this horse is very fast; I do not regard him as in the highest sense beautiful; he may even be deficient in wind; his tail certainly is short; and I think I can detect in his forelegs a tendency to spring too far forward at the knees; but, Mrs. Adeler, the horse is urbane. The man said that his urbanity amounted to a positive weakness, and that is why I bought him. If a horse is not urbane, my dear, it is useless, no matter what its merit in other respects." She said that had been her opinion from early childhood. "I do not care greatly, Mrs. Adeler, for excessive speed. Give me a horse that can proceed with merely a tolerable degree of celerity and I am content. I never could comprehend why a man whose horse can trot a mile in two minutes and forty seconds should be made unhappy because another man's horse trots the same distance one second sooner--that is, of course, supposing that they are not running for money. One second of time never makes any especial difference to me, even when I am in a hurry. What I want in a horse is not swiftness, but urbanity. I would rather have a kind-hearted horse, like ours, than the most rapid trotter with a wicked disposition." For a while I enjoyed having a horse, and I felt glad I had bought him. It seemed very good to drive down by the river-bank upon a pleasant evening, with the cool breeze blowing in from the water, and the country around beautiful with the bright foliage of early autumn. There was a sufficient compensation for the heat and wretchedness of the busy day in that quiet journey over the level road and past the fragrant fields in the early twilight; and as we came home amid the deepening shadows, we could find pleasure in watching the schooners far off in the channel flinging out their lights, and we could see the rays streaming across the wide interval of rippling surface, and moving weirdly and strangely with the motion of the water. Sometimes, upon going out, we would overtake Cooley in his dearborn; and then it was felicitous to observe how, when I touched my horse with the whip, the animal put his head down, elevated his abbreviated tail to a horizontal position and left Cooley far, far behind, flogging his tawny horse with such fury as would surely have subjected him to the reproaches of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals if that excellent organization had been present. My horse could achieve a tolerably rapid gait when he desired to do so. That fact made existence in this world of anguish and tears seem even more sad to Cooley than it had done previously. I feel sure that he would have given fabulous sums if his horse could have trotted a mile in a minute--just once--when we were upon the road together. I began to think that it was just as well, after all, to have a progressive horse as a slow one. [Illustration]