Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
"What a clipper that off-horse is, John," said I as we cleared London, and got to the level road by Kew Gardens; "let me take the reins for five minutes they're going so pleasantly." But John don't like me to drive anything more sporting than a pony-carriage, and he refused point blank, which, to say the least of it, was brutal on his part.
"Will a duck swim?" exclaimed Dick, delighted beyond measure, with but the one drawback to supreme happiness, of a wish that his off-horse had been more than twice in harness.
But, seeing no sign of stirring, he used his foot to give it a shake, when he discovered he was trying to rouse a dead Yankee! Having been on duty all night I was being left unmolested to the last moment, when Joe Shaner came to me, as usual, and very quietly rolled up my blanket with his, to be carried on his off-horse. This was the battlefield of White Oak Swamp, fought on June 30.
"The near-horse is eleven," I said, "and the off-horse is supposed to be " "Poh! poh! Littlepage," interrupted Guert, making signs to me to be quiet "you may think the off-horse ten, but I should place him at about nine. His teeth are excellent, and there is not even a wind-gall on his legs. There is a cross of the Flemish in that beast."
"Bad luck to ye!" cried he, apostrophizing the off-horse, a tall, raw-boned beast, with a Roman nose, a dipped back, and a tail ragged and jagged like a hand-saw, "bad luck to ye! there never was a good one of your color!" This, for the information of the "unjockeyed," I may add, was a species of brindled gray. "How did it happen, Patsey; how did it happen, my lad?"
Go to sleep at the beginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw wake up, and the first thing you saw was the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with care, and the cautious postilion gently applying his spur, whilst manoeuvring across this system of grooves with some sort of science that looked like a gypsy's palmistry; so equally unintelligible to me were his motions, in what he sought and in what he avoided.
As all of them had had considerable experience in such unsavory places they believed they knew fairly well how to go about the hunt. "Well, we ought to fetch that old farm mighty soon now, I should think, Elmer," remarked the driver, as he flecked the back of the off-horse to disturb a big green fly that was trying to stab the sweat-covered animal in a tender spot.
"He calls working from sunrise until it's dark, and afterwards now and then, amusement!" Then she looked back at Wyllard. "I believe it isn't quite easy for you to hold your back as straight as you are doing, and that off-horse certainly looks as if it wanted to lie down." Wyllard laughed. "It won't until after supper, anyway. There are two more rows of furrows still to do."
He was out of his head most of the time, though never violent, and all through the long nights lay flat on his back, looking at the ceiling with bright, blank eyes, driving his ox-team, skidding logs, plowing in stony ground and remembering to favor the off-horse whose wind wasn't good, planting, hoeing, tending his sheep, and teaching obstinate lambs to drink.
Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted, like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the haw across his eye, from time to time, that he was paying any attention to the argument. He thrust his jaw out sidewise, as his habit is when he pulls, and changed his leg.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking