d raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then
he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod
can cover his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road
to an ordinary buggy. He is tremendously powerful behind, but, like most
Hambletonians, he grows a trifle sullen as he gets older. No one can
love Rod very much; but no one can help respecting him.

"I wish to wake those," the yellow horse went on, "to an abidin' sense
o' their wrongs an' their injuries an' their outrages."

"Haow's that?" said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily. He thought
Boney was talking of some kind of feed.

"An' when I say outrages and injuries"--Boney waved his tail furiously
"I mean 'em, too. Great Oats! That's just what I do mean, plain an'
straight."

"The gentleman talks quite earnest," said Tuck, the mare, to Nip, her
brother. "There's no doubt thinkin' broadens the horizons o' the mind.
His language is quite lofty."

"Hesh, sis," Nip answered.

"He hain't widened nothin' 'cep' the circle he's ett in pasture. They
feed words fer beddin' where he comes from."

"It's elegant talkin', though," Tuck returned, with an unconvinced toss
of her pretty, lean little head.

The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant to
be extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had been badly
stuffed.

"Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an' without favour,--what
has Man the Oppressor ever done for you?--Are you not inalienably
entitled to the free air o' heaven, blowin' acrost this boundless
prairie?"

"Hev ye ever wintered here?" said the Deacon, merrily, while the others
snickered. "It's kinder cool."

"Not yet," said Boney. "I come from the boundless confines o' Kansas,
where the noblest of our kind have their abidin' place among the
sunflowers on the threshold o' the settin' sun in his glory."

"An' they sent you ahead as a sample?" said Rick, with an amused quiver
of his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as fine and as wavy
as a quadroon's back hair.

"Kansas, sir, needs no advertisement. Her native sons rely on themselves
an' their native sires. Yes, sir."

Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head. His affliction makes
him bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most courteous of horses.

"Excuse me, suh," he said slowly, "but, unless I have been misinfohmed,
most of your prominent siahs, suh, are impo'ted from Kentucky; an' I'm