eyser_ (at the door again). "Keyser, you lazy vagabone! Why
don't you 'tend to milkin' them cows? Not one mossel of supper do you
put in your mouth this night unless you do the milkin' right off. You
sha'n't touch a crust, or my name's not Emeline Keyser!"

Then Keyser leaped to his feet in a perfect frenzy of rage and hurled
the chair at Mrs. Keyser; whereupon she seized the poker and came
toward him with savage earnestness. Then we adjourned to the front
yard suddenly; and as Butterwick and I got into the carriage to go
home, Keyser, with a humble expression in his eyes, said:

"Gentlemen, I'll tell you that hoss story another time, when the old
woman's calmer. Good-day."

I am going to ask him to write it out. I am anxious to know what that
horse did down at the creek.

Butterwick subsequently bought another horse from a friend of his in
the city, but the animal developed eccentricities of such a remarkable
character that he became unpopular. Butterwick, in explaining the
subject to me, said,

"I was surprised to find, when I drove him out for the first time,
that he had an irresistible propensity to back. He seemed to be
impressed with a conviction that nature had put his hind legs in
front, and that he could see with his tail; and whenever I attempted
to start him, he always proceeded backward until I whipped him
savagely, and then he would go in a proper manner, but suddenly, and
with the air of a horse who had a conviction that there was a lunatic
in the carriage who didn't know what he was about. One day, while we
were coming down the street, this theory became so strong that he
suddenly stopped and backed the carriage through the plate-glass
window of Mackey's drug-store. After that I always hitched him up
with his head toward the carriage, and then he seemed to feel better
contented, only sometimes he became too sociable, and used to put his
head over the dasher and try to chew my legs or to eat the lap-cover.

"Besides, the peculiar arrangement of the animal excited unpleasant
remark when I drove out; and when I wanted to stop and would hitch him
by the tail to a post, he had a very disagreeable way of reaching out
with his hind legs and sweeping the sidewalk whenever he saw anybody
that he felt as if he would like to kick.

"He was not much of a saddle-horse; not that he would attempt to throw
his rider, but whenever a saddle was put on him it made his back itch,
and he would always insist upon rubbi