A good many may have wondered why we so suddenly quit speeding our horse on the avenue. For two or three days we couldn't go down the avenue enough, and there is no person but will admit that our old pile driver trotted real spry. We did not get the idea that he was the fastest horse that ever was, but he seemed real soon. It takes a good deal of executive ability for a man who has a third-class horse to keep from going down the road with horses that are too fast. One must be a good judge, and when he finds a horse that he can beat, stick to him. We got the thing down pretty fine, but one day a man drove along beside us, going up, who seemed bound to get into conversation. He was a red-faced man, with these side-bar whiskers, evidently a German. He was driving a sorrel horse to a long sled, with a box on behind the seat, a sort of delivery sleigh. He had a barrel in the sleigh, filled with intestines from a slaughter house, two baskets full of the same freight, a cow's head, and two sheep heads. He was evidently owner of a sausage factory somewhere, and as he kept along beside us his company was somewhat annoying. Not that we were proud, but we feared the people on the avenue would think we were a silent partner in a sausage factory, and that we were talking business. The man was real entertaining in his conversation, but the load he had was not congenial, and we were glad when the foot of the hill was reached, so we could turn around and go down, and get away from him. We turned and spit on our hands, and begun to pull up on the old horse, and he began to get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about the sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air making every nerve get up and git. Suddenly the nose of a sorrel horse began to work up by where we sat, and we looked around, and may we never live to make a million dollars if it wasn't the red-faced sausage man, intestines, cow's head, basket and all, and his old horse was coming for all that was out. We blush for our sex. It would look nice to get in the papers that we had been racing our blue-blooded thoroughbred against a sausage butcher, wouldn't it? Our plan was formed in an instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and we took out the whip and touched our horse on a raw spot, intending to go right away from the fertilizer. The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, and to have his pride touched, for he snorted and let out another link. We don't know as anyone would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and costly steed went, the faster that homely and cheap butcher horse climbed. People by the hundreds all along the line were watching the race. The baskets of sausage covets were slewing around from one side of his sled to the other, and we expected every moment one of them would flop over into our cutter.