ing for the door. I followed, as a matter of course,
because I had a tight hold on the rope, and hit about every
partition-stud worth speaking of on that side of the barn. Mrs. Perkins
was at the window and saw us come out of the door. She subsequently
remarked that we came out skipping like two innocent children. The
skipping was entirely unintentional on my part. I felt as if I stood on
the verge of eternity. My legs may have skipped, but my mind was filled
with awe.

I took the animal out to exercise him. He exercised me before I got
through with it. He went around a few times in a circle; then he stopped
suddenly, spread out his forelegs, and looked at me. Then he leaned
forward a little, and hoisted both hind legs, and threw about two
coal-hods of mud over a line full of clothes Mrs. Perkins had just hung
out.

That excellent lady had taken a position at the window, and, whenever
the evolutions of the awful beast permitted, I caught a glance of her
features. She appeared to be very much interested in the proceedings;
but the instant that the mud flew, she disappeared from the window, and
a moment later she appeared on the stoop with a long poker in her hand,
and fire enough in her eye to heat it red-hot.

Just then Stiver's horse stood up on his hind legs and tried to hug me
with the others. This scared me. A horse never shows his strength to
such advantage as when he is coming down on you like a frantic
pile-driver. I instantly dodged, and the cold sweat fairly boiled out
of me.

It suddenly came over me that I had once figured in a similar position
years ago. My grandfather owned a little white horse that would get up
from a meal at Delmonico's to kick the President of the United States.
He sent me to the lot one day, and unhappily suggested that I often went
after that horse and suffered all kinds of defeat in getting him out of
the pasture, but I had never tried to ride him. Heaven knows I never
thought of it. I had my usual trouble with him that day. He tried to
jump over me, and push me down in a mud-hole, and finally got up on his
hind legs and came waltzing after me with facilities enough to convert
me into hash, but I turned and just made for that fence with all the
agony a prospect of instant death could crowd into me. If our candidate
for the Presidency had run one-half as well, there would be seventy-five
postmasters in Danbury to-day, instead of one.

I got him out finally, and then he was quiet