MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 281, 28 March 1879, Page 3

MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE.

In the early part of last summer, Mr Butterwick bought himself a carriage horse. Before he had fairly had a chance to enjoy it, some business matter or other called him out to St. Louis, where he was detained for about six weeks. During his absence Mrs Butterwick assumed the responsibility for the managenTenf of-the horsey and as .she knew as nrach about taking care of horses as she did about conducting the processes [of the sidereal system, the result was that Mr Butterwiek's horse was the unconscious parent of infinite disaster. When Butterwick returned, and had kissed his wife and talked oyer his journey, the following conversation ensued. Mrs Butterwick said— " Yon know our horse, dear ?" " Yes, dear; how is he getting alapg?" „ _, "Not so very well; he has cost a great deal of money since you've been away." 4* Indeed ?" " Yes, besides his regular feed, and Patrick's wages as hostler, I have on hand unpaid bills to the amount of lOOOdols. on his account!" " One thojsand ! • Why, Emma, you amaze me! What on earth does it mean ?" " I'll tell you the whole story, love. Just after you left he took a severe cold .ahd he coughed incessantly. You could hear him cough for miles. All the neighbors complained of it; Aid Mr Potts next door was so angry that he shot at the horse four times. Patrick said it was the whooping cough." V Whooping cough, darling ? Impos- | sible! a horse never- has -whooping cough." " Well, Patrick said so. And as I always 'give paregoric to the children when they cough, I concluded that it would be good for the horse, so I bought a bucketful and gave it to him with sugar." » " A bucketful of paregoric, my love ! It was enough to kill him !" " Patrick said that was a regular dose for a horse of sedentary habits ; and it didn't kill him. It put him to sleep. You will be surprised Henry, dear, to learn that the horse slept straight ahead for four weeks. Never woke up once. I was frightened about it, but Patrick told me that it was the sign of a good M" He said that Dexter often slept iths on a staetch, and that once Goldsmith Maid to a race * she was sound asleep, and she a mile in 2.15, I think he said, getting awake." said that, did he ?" Z"es ; that was at the end of the week. But as the horse didn't up, Patrick said it couldn't be the that kept him asleep so long ; came to me and asked me not to but he had suspicions that had mesmerized him." never heard of a horse being mesHw, dearest." did I, but Patrick said it common thing with the better

class of horses. And when he kept on sleeping, dear, I got frightened, and Patrick consulted the horse doctor, who came over with a galvanic battery, which he said would wake the horse. They fixed the wire to his hg and turned on the current. It did rouse him. He got up and kicked fourteen boards out of the side of the stable, and then jumped the fence into Mr Potts' yard, where he trod on a litter of young pigs, kicked two cows to death and bit the tops off eight apple trees. Patrick said he tried to swallow Mrs Potts'baby, but I didn't see him do that." " The man that sold him to mo didn't mention that he was fond of babies." "But he got over the attack. The only effect was that the paregoric or electricity or something turned his hair all the wrong way, and he looks the queerest you ever saw. Oh, yes, it did seem to affect his appetite, too. He appeared to be always hungry. He ate up the hay rack and two sets of harness and the dashboard on the best carriage. And one night he broke out and nibbled off all the door knobs on the back of the house, and ate three sheets and a pair of drawers from the clothes-line, besides four croquet balls and one of my old hoop skirts." Door knobs, Emma ? Has he shown a fondness for door knobs ?" Yes ; and he ate Louisa's hymn book too. She left it lying on the table on the porch. Patrick said he knew a man in Ireland whose horse would starve to death unless they fed him on Bibles. If he couldn't get Bibleß he'd take Testaments ; but unless he got Scriptures of some kind he was Utterly intractable. " I would like to have a look at that horse, dear." ; "So we got the horse doctor again, and he said that what the poor animal wanted was a hypedermic injection of morphia to calm his nerves. He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under the horse's skin. But Patrick said that he could do it without the machine. So one day he got the morphia and began to bore a hole in the horse with a gimlet." "Agimlet, Emma?" "An ordinary gimlet. But it seemed unpleasant to the horse, and so he kicked Patrick through the partition, breaking three of his ribs. Then I got the doctor to perform the operation properly, and the horse after that appeared right well, excepting that I noticed that he had snddenly acquired an extraordinary propensity for standing on his head," "He is the first horse that ever wanted to do that, love." "Patrick said not. He told me about a man |he had worked for in Oshkoshwho had a team of mules which always stood on their heads when they were not at work. He said all the mules in Oshkosh did. So Patrick tied a heavy stone to our horse's tail to balance him and keep him straight. And this worked a charm, until I took the horse to church one Sunday, when, while a crowd stood around h'm, looking at him, he swung his tail around and brained two boys ■with the stone." f Brained them, my love ?" "Well, I didn't see them myself; but Patrick told me when I came out of church that they were as good as der.d. And he said he remembered that that Oshkosh man used to coax his mules to stand on their legs by letting them hear music. It soothed them, he said. And so Patrick got a friend to come around and sit in our stall, and calm our horse by playing on the accordeon." " Did it make himcalmer ?" "It seemed to at first; but one day Patrick undertook to bleed him for the blind staggers, and he must have cut the brute in the wrong for the poor brute fell over on the p.ccordeon person and died, nearly killing the musician." " The horse is dead, then, Where is the bill?" " I'll read it to you: THE BILL. DOL. Horse doctor's fee 75 00 Paregoric for cough 40 00 Galvanic battery 10 10 Kepairing stable • ... 12 25 Pott's cow, pigs, trees and baby 125 75 Damage to door-nobs, &c ... 98 50 Louisa's hymn-book 0 25 Gimlet and injections 15 00 Kepairing Patrick's ribs 80 00 Music on Accordeon 10 50 Damage to player 87 00 Burying two boys 446 25 1000 60 • " That is all, love, is it ?" » Yes." Then Mr Butterwick folded the bill up and went out into the back yard to ha>e a chat by himself. The bill is yet unpaid. He says he will pay it as boon as he gets another horse. He will get another horse when he gets to heaven, if he can, but not before.— Max Adeler.