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Updated: December 23, 2025
At that moment he loathed himself, and then after the usual derelict fashion cursed the fate that had sent him, after graduating, to a frontier garrison the dull monotony of whose duties made the Border horse-play of dissipation a relief. Already he had reached the miserable point of envying the veteran capacities of his superiors and equals.
The gowns of the women were grotesque and the men were lawless appearing, either as to hair or beards or both. He divined the dreadful thing he was stumbling upon even before he noted the sign in large letters on the back of a folding chair: "Jeff Baird's Buckeye Comedies." These were the buffoons who with their coarse pantomime, their heavy horse-play, did so much to debase a great art.
It was a dreary piece of business, varied by horse-play considered "kind o' rough" by even the more boisterous among us.
In some communities still rougher horse-play than unexpected volleys of musketry was shown to the bridal party or to wedding guests. Great trees were felled across the bridle-paths, or grapevines were stretched across to hinder the free passage, and thus delay the bridal festivities. Occasionally the wedding-bells did not ring smoothly.
As mariners crossing the equator require all their comrades, who have not been "over the line" to submit to lathering and shaving, so the Western voyageurs merrily compelled their mates to submit to similar horse-play. The great river was also the mark above which explorers entered upon what was called the Upper Missouri.
Among all these unfamiliar sights and sounds I ranged disconsolate, awed by the vast concourse, deafened by the universal uproar, and not a little disgusted by the coarse humour and rough horse-play of this truly motley throng.
All this rough-and-ready dealing with grades and curves was not mere horse-play, but had a serious purpose underlying it, every trip having its record as to some feature of defect or improvement.
Indifferent to the laughter and horse-play near them a grave-faced Petty Officer stood by the door of his carriage saying good-bye to his wife and children before returning to another nine months' exile.
Anyone who reads much of the always grave and sometimes most moving orations of Lincoln's later years may do well to turn back to this agreeable piece of debating-society horse-play. But he should then turn a few pages further back to Lincoln's little Bill for the gradual and compensated extinction of slavery in the District of Columbia, where Washington stands.
Wildeve had looked upon Venn's first attempt as a species of horse-play, which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the perilous. Had Wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest Venn had become he might have been still more alarmed.
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