He's harmless, but he's just naturally one of the know-it-all-kind, and
he's got to show off."

There is no man in a small town who can give such a satisfying and
official welcome to a stranger as that given by the liveryman, and
when the landlord of the hotel and the owner of the livery stable are
combined in one man he is better than a reception committee composed of
the mayor and the leading citizens. He is glad to see the stranger, and
he lets him know it. He has a gruff, hearty, and not too servile manner,
and a way of speaking of the men of the town and the farmers of the
surrounding country as if he owned them. Having bought horses of many of
them, he knows their bad traits, and he has an air of knowing much more
than he would willingly tell regarding them. He is not inquisitive
about the stranger's business, and is willing to give him information.
Probably it is his trade of buying and selling and renting horses that
gives him such a flavor of his own, for he knows that the horses he
lets out on livery are often as intelligent as the men who hire them.
He comes as near the chivalric model of the old Southern planter as a
Northern business man can, but his slaves are horses, and his overseer
the hostler. He is a man in authority, even though is authority is over
horses.

Modern civilization has few finer sights and sounds than the liveryman
when he is asked if he has a horse he can let out for a ten-mile drive
into the country. He looks at the supplicant doubtfully; "Well, I
dunno," he says, "where was it you wanted to drive to?" He receives the
answer with a non-committal air. "That's nearer fourteen mile than ten,"
he says and then turns to the hostler. "Say, Potts, Billy's out, ain't
he?" Potts growls out the answer, "Doc Weaver's got him out. Won't be
back till seven." The liveryman pulls slowly at his cigar, and runs his
hand over his hair. "How's the bay mare's hoof today?" he asks. Potts
shakes his head. "That's right," says the liveryman, "it don't do to
take no chances with a hoof like that. And we haven't got a thing else
in the barn except that black horse, have we, Potts?" "Everything else
out," says Potts. The liveryman walks away a few steps, and then turns
suddenly. "Hitch up the black, Potts," he says, with an air of sudden
recklessness. "Put him in that light, side-bar buggy of Doc Weaver's.
Want a hitching strap? Put in a hitching strap, Potts. AND that new
whip."

The result is that you get