第11章 Chapter X.(2)

At different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to one of mettle;--for on such a one he could fit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully de vanitate mundi et fuga faeculi, as with the advantage of a death's-head before him;--that, in all other exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along,--to as much account as in his study;--that he could draw up an argument in his sermon,--or a hole in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the other;--that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incompatible movements.--But that upon his steed--he could unite and reconcile every thing,--he could compose his sermon--he could compose his cough,--and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to sleep.--In short, the parson upon such encounters would assign any cause but the true cause,--and he with-held the true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to him.

But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this gentleman's life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will,--to run into the opposite extreme.--In the language of the county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling: and as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile country,--it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last;--as much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this; that his horse was either clapp'd, or spavin'd, or greaz'd;--or he was twitter-bon'd, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him, which would let him carry no flesh;--so that he had every nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,--and a good horse to purchase in his stead.

What the loss in such a balance might amount to, communibus annis, I would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffick, to determine;--but let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expences, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish: