The worst of it is, these horses always manage it so as to get tethered
across the sidewalk in the most populous thoroughfares, where they at
once drop into the semblance of a sound slumber. By this means they
lure the unsuspecting to their doom, and just as some unconscious
pedestrian is passing astern of them they wake up, and without a
preliminary yawn, or even a warning shake of the tail like the more
chivalrous rattlesnake, they at once discharge their feet at him with a
rapidity and effect that are quite surprising if the range be not too
long. Usually this occurs in Merchant-street, below Montgomery, and the
damage is merely nominal; some worthless Italian fisherman, market
gardener, or decayed gentleman oozing out of a second-class restaurant
being the only sufferer.
Rut not infrequently these playful brutes get themselves tethered in
some fashionable promenade, and the consequence is demoralizing to
white people. We speak within the limits of possibility when we say
that we have seen no less than seven women and children in the air at
once, impelled heavenward by as many consecutive kicks of a single
skilled operator. No longer ago than we can remember we saw an aged
party in spectacles and a clawhammer coat gyrating through the air like
an irregular bolt shot out of a catapult. Before we could ascertain
from him the site of the quadruped from whom he had received his
impulsion, he had passed like a vague dream, and the equine scoundrel
went unwhipped of justice.
These flying squadrons are serious inconveniences to public travel; it
is conducive to profanity to have a whizzing young woman, a rattling
old man, or a singing baby flung against one’s face every few moments
by the hoofs of some animal whom one has never injured, and who is a
perfect stranger.
It ought to be stopped.
.... In the telegraphic account of a distressing railway accident in
New York, we find the following:—“The body of Mr. Germain was
identified by his business partner, John Austin, who seemed terribly
affected by his loss.”
O, reader, how little we think upon the fearful possibilities hidden
away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its
light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object,
about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and
shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and
makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a
sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets;
to-morrow—we lose our business partner!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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