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Updated: July 27, 2025
He looked very sad and serious, and, seating himself in a corner of the room, proceeded to repair the horse-collar. He could not forget Gavryl, however the threatening words he had used in the court-room and those which Ivan had just heard.
Mechanically, as a man does when the routine of his life is presented to him, from the first Minister of State to the poor clown at a suburban theatre, doomed to appear at their posts, to prose on a Beer Bill, or grin through a horse-collar, though their hearts are bleeding at every pore with some household or secret affliction, mechanically De Mauldon went his way towards the ramparts, at a section of which he daily drilled his raw recruits.
And you, too, Aksinya Stepanovna, do not forsake her, see that everything is as it should be . . . without any nonsense. . . . And also, madam, if you would kindly advance me five roubles of her wages. I have got to buy a new horse-collar."
The whole brigade busies itself in drawing the blankets from the waggons and rolling them into long cylinders, which with a spare boot-lace are made into an exaggerated sort of horse-collar. The luckless owner then thrusts a head and one arm through the roll and he is ready to move on.
Until recently, Australian city artists and editors who knew as much about the bush as Downing Street knows about the British colonies in general seemed to think the horse-collar swag was still in existence; and some artists gave the swagman a stick, as if he were a tramp of civilization with an eye on the backyard and a fear of the dog.
But even a careless reader, skipping thru the book in idle amusement, ought to have been able to see in the 'Innocents Abroad, that the writer of this liveliest of books of travel was no mere merry-andrew, grinning thru a horse-collar to make sport for the groundlings; but a sincere observer of life, seeing thru his own eyes and setting down what he saw with abundant humor, of course, but also with profound respect for the eternal verities.
"I can't bear the fellow; it's just as you say, he's always in a whirlwind of insistence about nothing; and he doesn't grin through a horse-collar, he roars and guffaws through it. But then, you see, he has been very kind about this book; and, of course, a new author, like Lady Adela, is grateful.
This exhibition, which they call āyŏkĭt-tāk-poke, and which is evidently considered an accomplishment that few of them possess in perfection, distorts every feature in the most horrible manner imaginable, and would, I think, put our most skilful horse-collar grinners quite out of countenance.
So the Tug of War, which had been intended only for an exhibition, became in a sense the deciding event of the whole contest. The captain of the Kingston four was the large Sawed-Off, who was also the anchor of his team. He came out upon the floor, wearing around his waist a belt that was almost as graceful as a horse-collar, and quite as heavy, made, as it was, of padded leather.
We have received our letters most unexpectedly to-day; two of our gentlemen coming out last night from town brought sundry parcels, newspapers, etc., but never thought of turning round to see if all was safe in back of carriage, declaring it was such rough driving they could only think of how to hang on and not be jolted out, so that by the time they got home, letters, a horse-collar, spare cushions, etc. were all gone.
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