The Adventures of a Suburbanite

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“And gentle,” said Isobel. “And strong. And he must be a good-looking horse. One with a glossy skin. Reddish brown, with a long tail. I would like a great, big, strong-looking horse, like the Donelleys’, but faster, like the Smiths’.”

“Exactly,” I said. “That’s the sort of horse I had in mind. And we will get the horse immediately. I shall stay at home tomorrow and select the kind of horse we want, unless Mr. Millington takes me to Port Lafayette – ”

“Now, John,” said Isobel, “you must not be too hasty. You must be careful. I think the right way to buy a horse is to shop a little first, and see what people have in stock, and not take the first thing that is offered, the way you do when you buy shirts. You know how hideous some of those last shirts are, and the arms far too long, and we don’t want anything like that to happen when you are buying a horse. I have been talking to Mrs. Rolfs, and she says it is mere folly to buy the first horse that is offered. Mrs. Rolfs says it stands to reason that a man who wants to get rid of a horse would be the first man to offer it. As soon as he learned we wanted a horse he would rush to us with the horse, so as not to lose the chance of getting rid of it. And Mrs. Millington says it is worse than foolish to wait until the very last horse is offered and then buy that one, for the man that hung back in that way would undoubtedly be the man that did not particularly care to part with his horse, and would feel that he was doing us a favour, and would ask a perfectly unreasonable price. The thing to do, John, is to buy, as nearly as possible, the middle horse that is offered. If twenty-one horses were offered the thing to do would be to buy the eleventh horse, and in that way we would be sure to get a good horse at a reasonable price.”

I told Isobel that what she said was perfectly logical, and that I would get right to work and frame up an advertisement for the local paper, saying we wanted a horse and would be glad to examine twenty-one of them.

“Now, wait a minute,” she said, when I had started for my desk, “and don’t be in too great a hurry. You know the mistake you made in those last socks you bought, by going into the first store you came to, and the very first time you put on those socks they wore full of holes. We don’t want a horse that will wear like that. Mrs. Rolfs says we must be very particular what sort of man we buy our horse from. She says it is like suicide to buy a horse from a dealer, because a dealer knows so much more about horses than we do, and is up to so many tricks, that he would have no trouble at all in fooling us, and we would probably get a horse that was worth nothing at all. And Mrs. Millington says it is the greatest mistake in the world to buy a horse from an ordinary suburban commuter. She says commuters know nothing at all about horses and just buy them blindfold, and that, if we buy a horse from a commuter, we are sure to get a worthless horse that the commuter has had foisted upon him and is anxious to get rid of. The person to buy a horse of, John, is a person that knows all about horses, but who is not a dealer.”

“My idea exactly,” I told Isobel, and started for my desk again.

“John, dear,” said Isobel, before I had taken two steps, “why are you always so impetuous? Of course I want a horse, and I would like to have it as soon as possible, but I believe in exercising a little common sense. Where, may I ask, are you going to keep the horse when you have got him?”

Now, this had not occurred to me, but I answered promptly.

“I shall put him out to board,” I said unhesitatingly, and there was really nothing else I could say, for there was no stable on my place. I know plenty of suburbanites who keep horses and have them boarded at the livery stables. But this did not please Isobel.

“You must do nothing of the kind!” said Isobel firmly. “Mrs. Rolfs and Mrs. Millington both say there is nothing worse for a good horse than to put it out to board. Mrs. Rolfs says it is much cheaper to keep your horse in your own bam, and Mrs. Millington says she would have a very low opinion of any man who would trust his horse to a liveryman. She says the horse is man’s most faithful servant, and should be treated as such, and that she has not the least doubt that the liveryman would underfeed our horse, and then let it out to hire to some young harum-scarum, who would whip it into a gallop until it got overheated, and then water it when it was so hot the water would sizzle in its stomach, creating steam and giving it a bad case of colic. And Mrs. Rolfs says the liveryman would be pleased with this, rather than sorry, for then he would have to call in the veterinary, who would divide his fee with the liveryman. So, you see, we must keep our horse in our own stable.”

“But, my dear,” I protested, “we have no stable.”

“Then we must build one,” said Isobel with decision. “Mrs. Rolfs, as soon as she heard we were going to keep a horse, lent me a magazine with a picture of a very nice stable, and Mrs. Millington lent me another magazine with some excellent hints on how a modern stable should be arranged, and I think, with all the modern methods of doing things rapidly, we might have our stable all complete in a week, or ten days at the most.”

When I looked at Mrs. Rolfs’s picture of a stable I felt immediately that it would not suit my purse. I admitted to Isobel that it was a handsome stable, and that the cupola with the weather vane looked very well indeed, and that the idea of having two wings extended from the main building to form a sort of court was a good one; but I told her it would inconvenience the traffic on the street before our house if we moved our house far enough into the street to permit putting a stable of that size in our back-yard. I also told her, as gently as I could, that the style of architecture did not suit our house, for while our house is a plain house, the stable recommended by Mrs. Rolfs was pressed brick and stained shingles, with a slate roof. I also pointed out to Isobel that one horse hardly needed a stable of that size, and that even a very large horse would feel lonely in the main building.

I remarked jocosely that it would be well enough, if we could keep two or three grooms with nothing to do but hunt through the stable, trying to find the horse. If we could afford to do that, it would be a pleasure to awaken in the morning and have one of the grooms come running to us with the light of joy on his face, saying, “What do you think, sir?

“But I told her it would inconvenience the traffic on the street before our house if we moved our house far enough into the street to permit putting a stable of that size in our backyard.”

Isobel smiled in a wan, sad way at this, so I did not say, as I had intended saying if she had received my joke well, that the only horse requiring wings was Pegasus, and that he furnished his own.

Instead, I took up Mrs. Millington’s article on the modern stable. It was a masterly article, indeed, and it spoke highly of the gravity stable. No hay forks, no pitching up forage, no elevating feed, no loading of manure from a heap into a wagon. No, indeed! Everything must go down; the natural law of gravitation must do the work. Three stories, with the rear of the stable against the side of the hill. Drive your feed into the top story and unload it. Slide it down into the second story to the horse. Through a trap in the stall the manure falls into a wagon waiting to receive it.

There were other details – electric lights, silver-mounted chains, and other little things – but I did not pay much attention to them. I explained to Isobel that it would be difficult to build a firm, solid hill, large enough to back a three-story stable against, in our backyard. Of course, there were plenty of hills in our part of Long Island that were lying idle and might be had at low cost, but it costs a great deal to move a hill, and all of them were so large they would overlap our property and bury the homes of Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington. This did not greatly impress Isobel, however, and I had to come out firmly and tell her it would be impossible to build a stable three stories high, with two wings, pressed brick, shingle walls, slate roof, and a weather vane, and at the same time erect a nice hill and buy a horse and rig, all with one thousand dollars, which was all the money I could afford to spend.

When I put it that way, and gave her her choice of one thousand dollars’ worth of hill, or one thousand dollars’ worth of stable, or one thousand dollars’ worth of assorted horse, stable, and rig, she chose the last, and only remarked that she would insist on the weather vane and the manure pit. She said that Mrs. Rolfs had taken such an interest, bringing over the magazine, that it was only right to have the weather vane, at least; and that Mrs. Millington had been so interested and kind that the very least we could do was to have the manure pit.

“And another thing,” said Isobel, “Mr. Prawley is going to move out of the flat overhead.”

“Great Cæsar!” I exclaimed. “Is that man quitting again? Isn’t he getting enough wages?”

“Wages?” said Isobel. “Nothing has been said about wages. But this Mr. Prawley will not stay if we buy a horse. He says he does not mind gardening your garden and mowing your lawn and taking all your other outdoor exercise for you, but that a horse once reached over the side of the stall and bit him, and he doesn’t want to work – to live in a place where horses are liable to bite him at any time without a minute’s notice.”

“Tell that fellow,” I said, “that we will get a horse that doesn’t bite, or that we will muzzle the horse, or – ”

“It would be easier,” said Isobel, “to – to have a Prawley move in who was not afraid of horses. I know of a man in East Westcote, and he has had experience with horses – ”

“Very well,” I said. “I suppose you will wish your allowance increased?”

“Yes,” said Isobel, “if the new Mr. Prawley moves into the flat overhead, I will need about five dollars a month more than you have been allowing me.”

IV. “BOB”

THE next morning I stayed at home to see about getting the stable built in a hurry, but before I had finished breakfast Millington came over and said it was an ideal day for a little spin up to Port Lafayette in his automobile. He said the whole machine was in perfect order and we would dash out to Port Lafayette, have a bath in the salt water, and come spinning back, and he told Isobel and me to get on our hats, and he would have the car before the door in a minute.

Isobel and I hastily finished our coffee and put on our hats and went out to the gate, for, although we were very eager to build the stable, we did not like to offend Millington by refusing his invitation, when he had asked us so often to go to Port Lafayette. In half an hour he arrived at the gate, and we climbed in.

Our usual custom, on these trips to Port Lafayette, was for Millington and me to sit in front, while Isobel and Mrs. Millington sat in the rear. There was a nice little gate in the rear by which they could enter.

You see, Millington’s automobile was just a little old. I should not go so far as to say it was the first automobile ever made. It was probably the thirteenth, and Millington was probably the thirteenth owner. I know it had four cylinders, because Millington was constantly remarking that only three were working. Sometimes only one worked, and sometimes that one did not.

When we were all comfortably arranged in our seats, and all snugly tucked in, Millington cranked the machine for half an hour, and then remarked regretfully that this was one of the days none of the cylinders was working, and we got out again.

Mr. Rolfs had come out to see us start, and he helped Millington and me push the automobile back to the Millington garage; and as I walked homeward he said he had heard I was going to buy a horse, and he wanted to give me a little advice.

“Probably you have not given much attention to the subject of deforestation,” he said, “but I have, and it is the great crime of our age.”

I told him I did not see what that had to do with my purchasing a horse, but he said it had everything to do with it.

“When you buy a horse, you have to erect a stable,” he said, “and when you erect a stable, you have to buy lumber, and when you have to buy lumber, you suffer in your purse because the forests have been ruthlessly destroyed. As a friend and neighbour I would not have you go and purchase poor lumber, and with it build a stable that will rot to pieces in a few years. You must buy the best lumber, and that is too expensive to use recklessly. I want to warn you particularly about wire nails. Do not let your builder use them. They loosen in a short time and allow the boards to warp and crack. Personally, if I were building a stable I should have the ends of the boards dovetailed, and instead of nails I should use ash pegs, but I understand you do not wish to go to great expense, so screws will do. Let it be part of your contract that not a nail shall be used in your stable – nothing but screws, and if you can afford brass screws, so much the better. But remember, no nails!”

I thanked Rolfs, and when Millington came over to invite me to take a little run up to Port Lafayette the next morning I told him what Mr. Rolfs had said.

“Now that is just like Rolfs,” he said, “impractical as the day is long. Screws would not do at all. The carpenters would drive the screws with a hammer, and the screws would crack the wood. Take my advice and let it be part of your contract that not a screw is to be used in your stable; nothing but wire nails. But stipulate long wire nails; wire nails so long that they will go clear through and clinch on the other side, and then see that each and every nail is clinched. If you do this you will have no trouble with split lumber and not a board will work loose.”

When I spoke to the builder about the probable cost of the stable, I was sorry I had been so lenient with Isobel, and that I had not put my foot down on the weather vane at once. A weather vane does not add to the comfort of a family horse, and the longer I spoke with the builder the surer I became that what I needed was not a lot of gimcracks, but a plain, simple, story-and-a-half affair, with the chaste architectural lines of a dry-goods box. I mentioned, casually, the hints Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington had given me, but the builder did not seem very enthusiastic about them. He snorted in a peculiar way and then said that if I was going in for that sort of thing I could get better results by having no nails or screws at all. He said I could have holes bored in the boards with a gimlet, and have the stable laced together with rawhide thongs, but that when I got ready to talk business in a sensible way, I could let him know. He said this was his busy day, and that his office was not a lunatic asylum.

I managed to calm him in less than half an hour, and he remained quite docile until I mentioned Isobel and said she hoped he would have the stable ready for the horse within a week. It took me much longer to calm him that time. For a few moments I feared for his reason. But he quieted down.

Then I showed him a plan I had drawn, showing the working of the manure dump, and this had quite a different effect on him. It pleased him immensely, as I could see by his face. I explained how it operated; how throwing a catch allowed one end of the stall floor to drop, while the other end of the stall floor was held in place by hinges, and he said it was certainly a new idea. He asked me whether it was Mr. Rolfs’s idea or Mr. Millington’s, and when I told him I had worked out the plan myself, he said he had rather thought so.

“It is just such a plan as I should expect a man of your intelligence to work out,” he said.

Then he asked to see my bank-book, and when I had shown him just how much money I had, he said the best way to build the stable was by the day. If it was built by the job, he explained, a builder naturally had to hurry the job, and things were not done as carefully as I wished them done; but if it was done by the day, every hammer stroke would be carefully made, and I could pay every evening for the work done that day.

About the third week of the building operations those careful hammer strokes began to get on my nerves. I never knew hammer strokes so carefully considered and so cautiously delivered. The carpenters were most careful about them, and several times I spoke to the builder and suggested that if shorter nails were used perhaps it would not take so many strokes of the hammer to drive them in. I told him, if he was willing, I was willing to have the rest of the stable done by the job, but he said it had gone too far for that.

There were two men working on my stable – “two souls with but a single thought,” Isobel called them – and they were hard thinkers. The two of them would take hold of a board, one at either end, and hold it in their hands, and look at it, and think. I do not know what they thought about – deforestation, probably – but they would think for ten minutes and then put the board gently to one side and think about another board. They did their thinking, as they did their work, by the day.

We had plenty of time in which to select our horse while our stable was building. My advertisement in the local paper brought a horse to my door the morning after it appeared, and no horse could have suited me quite so well as that one, but I was resolute and firm. I told the man – he was not a dealer nor yet a commuter, and my conversation with him showed me that he knew just enough, and not too much, about horses – that I liked his horse very well indeed, but that I could not purchase it.. At this he seemed downcast, and I did not blame him. He seemed to take my refusal as some sort of personal insult, for the horse was young, large, strong, gentle, and speedy, and the price was right; but every time I began to weaken Isobel said, “John, remember number eleven!” and I refrained from purchasing that horse. I finally sent the man away with warm expressions of my esteem for him as a man, but that did not seem to cheer him much.

An hour later another man brought another horse, and I sent him away also, as was my duty, for he was only number two; but he was hardly gone when horse number one appeared again. I saw at once that I was going to have trouble with that man. He was so sure he had the horse I wanted that he would not go away and stay away. He kept coming back, and each time he went away sadder than before. He was a sad-looking man, anyway, and he would sit in his buggy and talk to me until another horse was driven up, and then he would sigh and drive down to the corner, and sit and look at me reproachfully until the other man drove away again. Then he would drive back and reproach me, with tears in his eyes, for not buying his horse. By lunch time I was almost worn out, and I told Isobel as much when I looked out of the window and saw that handsome horse and his sad driver waiting patiently at my gate. I told her I was tempted to take that horse, Mrs. Rolfs or no Mrs. Rolfs.

“Take that horse?” said Isobel, as if my words surprised her. “Why, of course we are going to take that horse!”

“But, my dear,” I said, “after what you told me about taking the eleventh horse?”

“Certainly,” said Isobel. “What is this but the eleventh horse? It came first, and then another horse came, and then this one came third, and then some other horse came, and then this one came fifth, and so on, and now it is standing there at the gate, the eleventh horse. Certainly we will buy this horse.”