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Updated: June 6, 2025
Hoop-la!" The brute gave a tearing lunge, and was out of the doorway like a shot before the old man could utter a word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he felt the reins stiffen in his hands, while the traces swung slack beside the thills. "If he keeps this up he'll do," he thought. As he turned up at the gate Maud came gayly down the path, muffled to the eyes. "Oh, what a nice cutter!
When anybody backed him between the thills of a wagon he was as slow as Timothy Turtle and no more graceful. And while people harnessed him he usually sighed heavily now and then, because he dreaded being hurried along the road. Before Twinkleheels came to the farm to live, Johnnie Green had thought it quite a lark to drive or ride Ebenezer. Now, however, Johnnie paid little heed to the old horse.
Upon these pins were attached shafts or thills, as to a cart, and to these teams, and thus the hogshead was rolled along rough roads and through streams for sometimes ninety miles to Augusta, for a market. When sold, the shafts were reserved, and upon these was then erected a sort of box, into which the few articles purchased were placed, and dragged home.
The harness consisted of a corn husk collar, hames cut from an ash tree root, or from an oak; tugs were rawhide; the lines also were rawhide; a hackamore or halter was used in place of a bridle; one horse was lashed between the thills by rawhide straps and pins in the thills for a hold-back; when two horses were used, the second horse was fastened ahead of the first by straps fastened on to the thills of the cart.
It is a proof, among many others, of what habit and custom can accomplish. At first I was as impatient at the request, and as restive under the operation, as a colt is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very reluctantly, but with less flouncing. Now, no dray-horse moves more readily to his thills than I to the painter's chair."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum," Last of its timber, they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died.
Pausing here, he plainly descried a stately "chair" leaning on its thills, in the shade of the weeping-willow, three horses hitched side by side to the lane-fence, and a faint glimmer of color between the mounds of box which almost hid the porch. It was not long though the wood on the western hill already threw its shadow into the glen before the sound of voices and hoofs emerged from the lane.
He had never listened when he had been told, nor looked when he might have seen it; so now he did not know what to do. Finally, from what he had hitherto learned, he recollected that the beginning of a cart is at the yoke, that is, the pole. So he thought he must commence there if he wanted to do the business thoroughly. He greased the thills, the pole, even the rack of the cart.
"I understand that I'm going to the fair," he told her, as Johnnie Green backed him between the thills of a wagon. "Once I would have been hitched to a light buggy, with a sulky tied behind it. But now I've got to take you and your family in this rattlety old contraption." Henrietta Hen didn't wait to hear any more.
Hoop-la!" The brute gave a tearing lunge, and was out of the doorway before the old man could utter another word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he felt the reins stiffen in his hands, and saw the traces swing slack beside the thills. "If he keeps this up he'll do," he said aloud. As he turned up at the gate Maud came gayly down the path, muffled to the eyes. "Oh, what a nice cutter!
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