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The Bird of Paradise

Chapter VII. The Colorado Races. Rosie runs for the Maiden. The Regeneration of Brosie

Chapter VII. The Colorado Races. Rosie runs for the Maiden. The Regeneration of Brosie.

The Kindergarten school and ladies' college of Madame Pennethorne at Summer Hill was held in high repute all over Louisiana. Next to the principal college for ladies in New Orleans, entrance into its charmed circle was in great demand. Beginning with the simple lessons of teaching children how to walk properly (not that either Pearly or Valentine wanted that, for they were nobby little walkers), how to observe discipline by submitting to an ordeal of holding their hands together on the crowns of their heads, and to say little nursery rhymes after the dictation of the governess, it rose through the various grades of education to the highest branches, exclusive of those inculcated at the university, whither, when its pupils had reached the highest rung of the Minervan ladder at the ladies' college, many of the more ambitious of the scholars were sent to enter upon a university course: as Guinevere herself had been from the metropolitan seminary at Rosemary Point. It was further a bounteous means of support to the richly-deserving Guinevere, with her delicate little Cyril and her profligate husband. Marmaduke during the first few weeks of the change underwent a complete transformation, only unfortunately to revert to his old irresistible habits again. During the term of Brosie's stay in Summer Hill, the two bacchanalians came frequently into contact; but as money was a scarce commodity, they had few opportunities of paying proper devotion at the shrine of the wine-god. They were too much afraid of each other to do so together, and the quantity pumped out for a four or a six was little enough for Brosie himself.

One morning early, very early, Marmaduke, who had probably been out all night dossing in a boiler on the Mississippi Quay or on the banks of the Red River, happened to catch the early bird oozing out through the back way of the "Old Red Pump" past the ferocious mastiff, with whom, however, his old doggy instincts had succeeded in placing him on friendly terms. It was the only hotel where the amber was served out to him at page 327wholesale prices. The "Old Red Pump" he steadily supported to the exclusion of all others, after the maid forgot the extra pull for the four at the "Will o' the Wisp."

"What have you got, Brosie?" said the sinking-stomached Payne.

"Only a three," said Brosie, jauntily walking away.

"I'll toss you who scoffs it, right away with this button," said Marmaduke.

"What a bit of rot!" returned Brosie: "I calc'late I've got it and you guess you ain't got it. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's amber. Here's luck, old chap: it's partic'lar woody this morning." Down went the lot without so much as a wink or any further parley after his favorite toast given with great naiveté; but it was only a three.

The progress made by Pearly and Valentine under the guidance and scholarly care of Guinevere showed itself to be increasing by leaps and bounds every day. Their bright and vivid perceptive powers and their tenacious memories formed a rich virgin soil for her labours. Their father also taught them at home—he helped them every night with their home-lessons. From him they learned a large number of nursery rhymes, and they could rattle off the tale of the Nancy Gray, the poetry of the little cottage girl, Llewellyn and his dog, The Inchcape Rock, and the burial of Sir John Moore to perfection. They knew all about the wonders of the Arabian Nights, Æsop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, and Eliza in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and they could sing pretty duets and solos. Pearly could sing some laudable idylls, lyrics, and sacred songs, while most of Valentine's vocal tuition was received at the academy of Miss Lillie Delaine, who was always a favourite with the children, and who scattered deeds of kindness upon them in every way that she could. On the band-box under the noble conductorship of Brosie they could beat time to the martial music as well and accurately as any bandmaster, and they could both do a pretty pas seul to the clicking of Frederick's castanets. Their mother was a genius in music and harmony. The children inherited the strain.

For six months the life of the soaring Brosie was spent chiefly in the house at Summer Hill with the children, or in the wainscotted bars of the "Will o' the Wisp" and the "Old Red Pump." After this trifle of time wasted to himself, an advertisement appeared for an assistant mechanical dentist in the city. He decked himself out in his brother's surtout, black silk hat and gloves. In these he cut a great dash, as a sort of preamble to his making application for the appointment in person.

"Lillie, my gal," he said, as he came out of his room fully dressed for the presentment in the city: "the day is mighty big with fear. The short holiday is passt. Brother-man wants but little here below, and I feel that I must settle down to graft for a while for the sake of a change. The doctor said a change would certainly be good for me. A brainy man like a doctor of dental surgery of Chicago badly wants a change, and although I have never gone into medical subjects further than the month, the face and the cranium, down to the neck and chest, a full inch past the shoulders, page 328on self-enquerry I opinionate likewise myself. It is only a small appointment, but I must get it; after I get it, I'll be full pardner in a week. It's a rotten-bad base use of myself, as a gen'leman—which you will acknowledge I am. It is throwing broadcast pearls before swine; but (drawing on a glove) paupers ken't be choosers. Oh! dear me; no back off now: heigho. I shall fetch back to you your ten cents when I receive my salary at the end of the week—on that my rec'lection's as sure as a steam-derrick. You need have no botheration on that score. I have raised sufficient wind, I calc'late, from my brother to pay my fere into town, which, however, I guess I can back off by smiling and cordially shaking hands with the conductor of the cair. He will guess p'raps I have a reg'lar periodical permit and will set me for the doctor; for, as you may take stock, I have got on all his outfit but the pants. Notwithstanding, it's as well to have the dollars handy. Under these circumstances and conditions, my gal, may I presume that it would not be leaning rayther too heavily on your good natur' to ask you, as soon as that grandiloquent song is consummated, to advance me a six or a four by way of a loan, and I'll vamoose right-away slick to the 'Old Red Pump.'"

Finding a three and a one, she handed them over, wrinkled her brow and said —"Y'ain't agoin' in them there boots, are yer? Y'ain't scraped the dirt off for three months—throw 'em down there and I'll rub 'em."

"Rub 'em while they're on, if it's not too close quarters," said Brosie, and when she knocked off the cakes of mud with the scrubbing-brush, he removed one glove and black-leaded them over by accidentally taking the blacklead brush, but he calc'lated they would do well enough. The mistake was not very noticeable, so shaking hands with and raising his hat to the servants he took his departure, an old boot being heaved after his heels for luck, while Lillie apostrophized him in mezzo-soprano with the songs "Get yer 'air cut: get yer 'air cut," and "He's—bound—to take—the cake—wherever—he—may go-oh."

Passing through the railway platform barrier as gracefully as only he and Brick Bore could do, Brosie nimbly turned on his blackleaded heels and discoursed with the porter the favourite for the Corinthian Cup, advising the man to put his money, as he himself had done to the tune of a thousand, on what from first to last proved to be an outsider before and also after the race. Seizing a favourable opportunity when a small party of others were entering the car, Brosie portentously seated himself in the train and was whisked away to the city.

There he first entered the bar of the "The Fifteen Hooks," and called for a two of two ales; but his hand was so shaky and he was so unaccustomed to silver-plated tankards that the half of it spilled upon the marble-topped table. Supported and sanguine, he proceeded to the rooms of the New York Cosmopolitan Odontological Institute—an emporium where teeth, aching or not aching, were lugged out as readily as shelling peas and where artificial teeth were supplied for the million at, uppers and page 329lowers, three dollars a set. For a while he stood staring at the glass showcase hung up on a nail outside. It contained not only a reflection of himself in the glass, bat a small exhibition of their workmanship, in the shape of an automatic opening and closing mouth full of such pretty teeth on a wax figure of a face. The specimens were guaranteed to have been made on the premises by their own workmen, but, according to Brosie, were imported from the dental college in Apricot Street, Chicago. He left the picturesque scene after adjusting his necktie and entered a stationery establishment next door to the drug and jewelry shop of his old partner. Batty Tuke, and asked to be shown some cartes de visite, out of one of the packets of which he slily extricated two, and handing the balance back to the stationer said he would call again. Meeting, when he was clear of the stationer, a travelling printing press, dealing out cards at fifty for half a dollar, printed while be waited, he requested the performer on the treadle printing machine, with whom be paved his way with a few wrinkles on the play of the heel and toe, to give him a specimen of his printing on the card which he produced, with the object of praising the handiwork to his brother, the great and well-known doctor. With this request, thinking it might lead to something, the performing greenhorn readily complied, and before Brosie could spell out his name a second time he was handed the card, thrown out on the tray and stamped as large as life and twice as natural—Doctor Ambrose Vernon Whitworth, R.D.S., D.D.S., U.S.A., Chic., Ill., American Surgical Dentist—running in two bold parallel lines across the diameter of the card, the ear of which the wonderful machine turned down.

Armed with the all-important ticket, and one more "two" at a tavern round the corner, he ascended the steps of the New York Cosmopolitan Odontological Institute of Broad Street, where no sooner had he taken a seat upstairs than a lout rushed him with a pair of dental tongs and asked which one it was; but Brosie said—"Damn your impudence; take this caird to the head of the consarn—quick, lively, ken't wait." Looking here and there about the benches in the work-room, he saw specimens of dental manufacture which he could have made before he left the pigeon-home of Foster Wax and Co.—double sets that would allow only the two big opposite canine teeth to meet; plates with molars in the place of incisors; bicuspides in the spaces for wisdoms; every tooth being very doggy in conformation, and one he could swear was the tusk of a shark. He critically examined all the vulcanite plates, made on the principle that the anatomy of the human mouth was universally the same, and what stood good for one stood good for all: bull-dog forceps for both "gnawers and grinders," old-fashioned keys, punches used by carpenters, levers and screws for dragging and grubbing them out and getting well at them from below: a pair of carpenter's callipers, serving the twofold purpose of picking and wrenching them out: dozens of pampa bludgeons with tobacco clinging to the blades, for disinfecting cavities and scraping tartar away: things like little crowbars, with plenty of purchase-power and tack hammers page 330for knocking them out and driving the amalgam well home. His first thoughts were to draw the attention of the firm to the clumsy and obsolete caboodles and tools used by the workmen, with the view of airing his recondite knowledge and skill, and showing the proprietor what model Chicago workmanship was like. He wavered and banished the notion.

"Good morning, sir," said the head of the firm advancing towards him.

"Good morning, boss," said Brosie: "at your service, boss" said Brosie with the usual Western drawl, touching his brother's silk hat with the glove and reaching out his hand for the habitual hand-shake.

"You have, I presume, called about the vacancy," said the head of the firm, taking full stock of the new applicant. "I suppose you have been in the city some time, as I have heard your name before and have seen it in the newspapers."

Certain of no recollection of ever having been run in for being drunk, he replied with as much American twang as he could bring to bear on the head of the firm, who was a Londoner—"No sir, I reckon you are off the bull's-eye plumb centre there, boss: I guess you are thinking of my brother, the doctor of medicine. I am his brother, I calc'late: you've got the rights of it now: I have only left Chicago, Lake Michigan, United States of America, some three months about, and as it is scarcely my natur' to take understrappers' job-work, unless perforce, I have never offered my services anywhere else before. I obtained, I calc'late, three gold medals at Chicago, Lake Michigan, for my gold-filling. I obtained eleven bronze medals, I guess, for crown-and-bridge work. I outstripped forty-nine Japanese odontological artists. I have shifted from the human jaw eight million teeth. I am well posted up in all surgical operations on the mouth, face, head and neck, down to the chest and shoulders. I have never backed off a job in any of those nat'ral regions—on that I'll stake my hat. In Chicago we leave the rest to the surgeons pure and simple. I am a strong advocate of tee-totallism, as you will nat'rally observe by the piece of white ribbon which I have carried through all the States of Amurica. I opinionate I may nat'rally make the enquerry what salary would you offer for a right-down, slap-up, A I operator, an out-an'-out real stunner, hailing from Chicago, Lake Michigan—the greatest city for dentistry in creation."

Bewildered by the asseverations and bombast of Brosie, the head of the firm hardly knew what to say; but after recovering his breath and equilibrium he offered a sprat to catch a whale and said—"Ten dollars a week for the first three years; twelve and a-half for the next three consecutive years; fifteen dollars a week, including holidays, after the term of six years has expired."

Brosie put the bone-handle of the walking-stick to his lips, whistling out dolefully along low expiration of great astonishment, and replied to the head of the firm, who prayed in his inmost soul he would not refuse—"Great Halifax! the brand alone, the mere smell of the stars and stripes, the living abstract of the name of Doctor of Dental Surgery of the United page 331States of Amurica, partic'larly Apricot Street, Chicago, Lake Michigan, is worth ten dollars a minute. I could lift that salary for reg'lating the mouths of the family of a wooden-headed tobacco-planter in Ohio, but notwithstanding I'll take it far the sake of introdoocing my non-such model system of crown-and-bridge work into these pairts. Yon can reckon on me for Monday morn' boss and no backing off. Shake, sir, I reckon you and me will soon get to be pardners,"

Triumphant he left, and reckoned up on the remaining card that ten dollars a week was equivalent to nearly fourteen sixes a-day, or three hundred and eighty-four pumpings a week—a good and liberal allowance. Besides it was a regular thing, he thought to himself; there would be no other personal outlay, and that altogether it suited him down to his toenails, which at the time were nearly on the ground.

He went regularly every morning for a week. The Saturday night came and he was paid the ten dollars. The Monday morning came and he refused to return to such an antiquated jumbled up and rough emporium ever again in his life.

"Lillie, my gal," he said when the Saturday night brought him home to Summer Hill, "behold your six and your three and your one. It's a doggone certainty you've got it at lasst. I have transmogrified the sum of my screw into quarter-dollars and cents—sixes, fours and threes. I will plank down a handful of them for my little akeribats' bank on the mantelshelf: I calc late I'll quit that cabooche: I never saw such a fit-up in my life. I have slaved at that rotten bad debasing job-work from haff-passt eight in the morn till haff-passt eight at night for six nights. I'll slave no mores: I've kinder come to the end of my tiddlee-winkin' dooty; I'll graft there no more. I'll back off that consarned ranche anyhow. I guess I'll vamoose for a few screws of tobacco. Where is my own hat and my own coat? I'll jest plant away this toggery and dodge round slick to the 'Old Red Pump.' Lillie, my gal, wash out the marine—what a surprise to my stomach it will be to be sure! I shall stow myself in that room again with my little akeribats and be as happy as a coon in the hollow of an old beech tree. I guess I'll lay low for a few months, and keep my weather eye lifting, so jest shake for look once more I may state right here don't you make no mistake my gal, this child will come out on top yet, and if he don't you can jest ride him on a rail and call him a rotten-bad varmint."

As far as the children were concerned, they hailed Brosie's virtuous resolution with most inexpressible delight. There was a heavy load of ennui on their little hearts from want of the sport with the music and the marching to the beat of the band-box. Abounding and overflowing with spirit, their paradise was to be with Brosie. After an unusually long delay at the "Old Red Pump" he returned rather transmogrified himself. "Liddie, m' gal" he sputtered out "I'm not a-sprung: I'm a-right; wo'ss th' time? I sh'd guess my little akeribats ll soon be—eer; p'raps quicker'n we know: don't too disgustin particklar and len's a four.

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I'm sorter dry but I'm noddrunk: I'm a—right; wo'ss th' time?" The little "akeribats," however, were fast asleep and very soon Brosie was narcotised on the sofa with a square-faced bottle of gin encircled in his arm.

The old mare Rosie, good and faithful servant as she had been to the doctor for eight years, although with care and kindness she was fit to work away for twice as long again, he decided on giving, buggy and all, to his father, who had a great liking for horses and the sweet little mare in particular. Any long distance he had to go he could drive in a hansom cab, by hailing one as Brosie had done years before from the rank outside his city quarters and, as it was, the groom was only kept idling and loitering about the house in Summer Hill all day or practising the business of upper-cuts, back-handers and under-cuts, right-handed feints, left-handed feints, and visitations of his right and his left upon the hind-quarters of the old mare in the stable or upon a bag of bran tied with a rope round the middle and stuck up in the manger to represent Donald Hoolihan. He had scored heavily off Donald, planting him several tunes on the jugular, and had it all his own way, whereas all Donald could do to return the compliment was to tear out some of his hair. Accordingly Eugene sent Frederick to Galveston with the whole turn-out, mare, harness, ceespring, buggy and riding-saddle, and the children began to feel how "friend after friend departs."

There a new system was instituted for feeding and grooming her. His father, who had been pensioned off from the position of surveyor in the crown-lands' office by the government of England, had loads of time on his hands to devote to Rosie. The old stable, for a long time inhabited by cocks and hens, was knocked sky-high by Dolly. Glue-pot Ike, the next door neighbour, and a sort of jack-leg carpenter built a new stable with hay-loft and buggy shed, which was quite an acquisition to Lily Cottage. Ike sneaked the nails from the timber-yard where he was employed, but charged for them all the same. Christopher made the energetic Marco Polo groom under his own supervision, but Dolly found it no child's play to perform the duties with satisfaction to his employer. With a new kind of dandy-brush, for which he had swopped a parrot with a green eye and a yellow eye to glue-pot Ike—the said dandy-brush being an old spoke-brush and charred on its side the timber-yard brand—Dolly hissed and brushed because he had seen a real groom hissing and brushing at the livery stable, while old Christopher sat superintending the work and smoking away like a lime-kiln or a factory chimney with a shiny brown meerschaum1 pipe never out of his mouth on an old kerosene-box. The sorely tried and heavy laden old man who for Brosie's sake had toiied and planned and plotted and sweated in the stürm und drang2 of his ardour, and who had for Brosie borne the heat and burden of the day, wearing out his heart for years for Brosie, resigning himself now to what he thought was the inevitable, contented himself with the pipe and the old chestnut mare—"the world forgetting and the world forgot." Rosie was the gratifica-page 333tion of the old man's fancy, and it was his pride to watch the progress of the meerschaum and to show now and then to an admiring circle how its white gave place to a creamy yellow, its yellow to a delicate chocolate, and its delicate chocolate to a rich deep brown. A wheelbarrow, large and weighty—one that would have sufficed to shift all Guinevere's furniture—was built specially for the use of the stable, while old Adam Quain took the contract for the supply of what he called greenstuff, or overgrown hay at ten cents a bundle. The buggy was varnished, new bolts put into the undercarriage, and the harness rubbed over with what was left of Frederick's ink-powder and black-oil. Swathed in bandages to keep off the dust, it was suspended on racks and brackets in the stable. The openings in the hay-rack were wide enough to permit of the mare pulling the sheaves of well-saved oaten hay through one at a tune and scattering it over the groove-and-tongue board floor in order to make a bed for herself. Two extra kittens were imported to grow into Tom and Mary-ann cats as companions for Rosie, multiply in geometrical progression and defend the oats, the bran and the greenstuff from the raids of the rats.

The little chestnut had really luxurious times in the stable at Lily Cottage, where she could wander at will in the garden, eat down the fruit trees, and roll on the flower-beds as much as she pleased. The only return expected of Rosie was to chew the greenstuff in as dainty and circumspect a manner as she could before the day-long gaze of old Christopher Whitworth mooning about the stable or smoking the pipe on the kerosene-box, and to carry the Christy minstrel once a week around the town, to the admiration by the people going to church of his horsemanship. With the sleeves of his coat too short, and his trousers half-mast high, the quondam midshipman could ride with his toes cocked up and sticking well out and his long spurs, from which old Christopher had filed away the rowels, buckled on a pair of shoes, as recklessly and boldly as any Dick Turpin that ever was known in a circus. He never missed an opportunity of bringing the little mare home all over reeking with sweat, which he explained to his father, who had given strict orders that she should only be walked all the way, was the result of a bath in the sea. By way of variety in the ordinary dietary scale for the stable, a further menu found its way there from the kitchen, chiefly after her Sabbath exertions, such as cabbage-stalks not wanted for their own dinner, potato-peelings, the remains of a dish of mashed potatoes or any boiled vegetables, together with crusts of pies—with the one exception of beef-steak pies—all of which were taken up smoking hot to the stable, where, after sniffing at them and satisfying her own mind that the delicacies were not emetics or poison, Rosie would devour them as voraciously as any Berkshire sow. An offer had been made that she should be made use of for the purpose of taking Miriam in the buggy on her visits to the family tomb, but this noble offer was refused. Miriam, from force of habit, preferred to walk every day to the favourite spot in solitude.

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Under the lightness of her duties and the inadequacy of her exercise, Rosie soon grew as fat as butter, and soon could give a pretty good guess as to who was sitting behind her on the right side of the buggy seat. When harnessed and ready to start, she would not bolt away like other horses. Rosie would politely wait till the driver was seated, when she would coolly turn around her head to see if it was the kindly old gentleman with the pipe or the harum-skarum flying Dutchman. If the two, as was commonly the case, Rosie would go to a good deal of trouble to observe which of the two sat on the right side and took command of the ribbons. Jogging along and jogging along in a go-day come-day way on the humdrum Sunday, slowly placing one foot forward and then the other, and then the other, and so on, when she saw it would suit whatever way it was, if ever she came to an unlevel crossing, she would stop and sigh an equine heigho and feel her way over it by a method invented by herself for her own convenience so as not to touch the dirty water, which might splash over her legs. If old Christopher shook the reins Rosie would shake her head; if he coaxed her to the foot of a hill, she would also shake her head and turn it round for home without any disagreement on the part of the driver, who would piteously declare it was a sign that the poor little thing had had enough for the day. If a bit of hay had fallen off a load on the side of the road, Rosie would stop and dawdle over to eat it, first turning her head around towards the buggy to ask the driver to be good enough to remove the bit; after which, old fumigating Christopher would embrace the opportunity of another light up and a few draws of the meerschaum. If he would attempt to take her by a long way home, he wasn't going to play any of his hanky-panky tricks on the resentful Rosie. Rosie would decidedly object, as she knew the proper way home and all the short cuts a long way better than old Christopher. Occasionally when she refused to saunter up a street where a sweetheart of Dolly's resided, the Christy minstrel would call upon her to move herself and get along; but Rosie well knew the reprimand would come from kindly old Christopher to leave her alone as the poor thing was doing very well. From the time she left the stable of the doctor and all the time she swallowed potatoes, pies and greenstuff at Lily Cottage, she was never known to turn a corner without slowing down to an idle walk. It saved the wheels and the bolts of the buggy, which Frederick in his efforts to artistically graze the wheels of other vehicles had rattled into the factories for repairs every few weeks.

Thoroughly convinced that she was at every point a first-class mare, they acquired by the agency of glue-pot Ike an American stud-book, where they found her breeding was Kirkconnell—Alice Hawthorn3. No sooner was the great discovery made than they dreamt of a fortune for each on the turf. Rosie was a very nice mover and she had the gift of going. The menu of pies, potatoes and greenstuff was cut off suddenly. The services of Brosie, who had been much attached to the mare, and as a gentleman had an ardent love for the sport, were engaged and an under-page 335standing come to that he was to leave Summer Hill and the children to show his form as a trainer.

How sad it is to say farewell! Pearly and Valentine felt it more than tongue can tell. The rising sun glinted on the magnifying glasses of turf prophets and touts concealed here and there among the bushes and watching Brosie à cheval in a trial with some old selling-plater4. His weight was thirteen stone ten; but it did dot prevent Brosie from riding the poor little mare at full gallop every morning for a couple of miles, and afterwards giving her swimming exercise in the sea, drenching her inside well with pure salt-water. In a short space of time Brosie by this system succeeded in reducing her corporeal weight almost to an equality with his own; whereat she was pronounced by the whole family as in excellent condition for racing, and incomparably fit for the Maiden at a small country race-meeting on the downs of the Colorado River.

In the Maiden the impost which the handicapper allotted the little dark chestnut was eight stone ten for a mile. The rest of the field, younger and heavier horses with lighter weights, brought the number of candidates up to sixteen for the Maiden. The first prize was twenty dollars sterling; second prize a meershaum pipe. The ten cent bets and halfdollar wagers on the little country race-course standing at the odds of eight to one against Rosie, while Stormlight, the favorite, stood at threes, the race was begun at a short distance from where old Christopher, the owner and nominator, located himself opposite the winning-post. Old Christopher always took all things seriously and pleasures especially moult tristement5, and with the expression of a true-born English sportsman shooting a barn-door fowl. There were no c'reckcards, but chalked up on a blackboard, as No. 9, Mr. C. W. Whitworth's dk. ch. mare Rosie, aged, by Kirkconnell—Alice Hawthorn, appeared, carrying the old colours of Moss Rose. Passing Christopher, whose heart bounded at the rattle and the clink of the flying hoofs, she was fourth, going remarkably strong and well held by the boy, with trousers on his legs and his cap blown off his head. Not being accustomed to the arrangements on race-courses, and greatly excited among the other horses, with the blood of her mustang sire boiling in her veins, she bolted off the hyperbolic curve in a headlong gallop at the first boundary flag, and allowed the rest of the field a start of twenty lengths, when, wondering where they had gone to, she saw them sailing round the track. Rosie started in hot pursuit. Shade of the game Moss Rose! she had them like pie in the twinkling of an eye. Again she swept through the ruck and lay fourth in the encircling field, level with Stormlight in the chocolate and blue, but only to meet with another mishap, as old Christopher Whitworth had girthed up the saddle himself, and was afraid of hurting her by buckling it too tight. The saddle swerved; the jockey swerved; number nine, the dark chestnut, swerved. The saddle slipped under her belly with the cantle downwards, and the jockey fell prone upon her, with his arms page 336around Rosie's neck and bellowing out in her ear to "Woa-up." Still the blood kept boiling, and she thought she still could win. Perhaps she could have won if it had not been for the awkward and cumbersome position of the jockey-boy, who finally had to roll off her neck and hold her in with the reins and bridle. Still she tried to drag him along. She was very fond of old Christopher and felt anxious to please him by winning at least the pipe. The boy came back with her quite safe, but the corners of his big square mouth were down like the horns of the moon. Tommy Tittle-mouse won the twenty dollars, and the pipe went to a descendant of the Duke of Wellington's famous charger, Copenhagen, with the boy in the shirt and the corduroys.

The exhaustive system of horse-training adopted and practised by the Chicago dentist had told a sad tale on the plucky and kind little mare. After the race, showing symptoms of foundering under the terrible strain, Rosie was patted and caressed as if the maiden were hers by rights, and warmed up with a liberal allowance of bran-mash and steamed oats specially prepared by her fatherly old adorer. It took weeks on greenstuff, cabbage-stalks, pies and potato-skins to put on her corny condition again, but not even the Queen of England, the bird of Paradise and Heaven, nor the Archangel Gabriel could have persuaded that devoted old man into racing his pet Rosie again.

One thing certain, the exertions required and put forth by the combined trainer and jockey in strict accordance with the manége6 of which Brosie was a propagandist—necessitating as it did his early rising every morning, his close attention and wasting down of his superabundant weight, contributed largely to the cessation of his tours around the bars of the town with the quart bottle under his coat. Instead of bottles of amber, the sixes now went for packets of Epsom salts7. They pulled down his weight and destroyed all the lethargy and taint of alcohol in his system at the same time. He would sniff at a glass of beer as indignantly as Rosie herself. The loss of the race did not at all prejudice his ameliorated habits. Brosie had tasted blood, and like the Bengal tiger it whetted his appetite for more. He had nearly—very nearly—trained the winner of the Colorado Maiden, and he hoped to do better with a horse of his own, when he could put his foot down on any interference with the system, feeling as he did fully convinced in his own mind that old Christopher had been slily feeding the race-horse on pies before the race. The quarter-dollars, as many as came in his way, he put carefully away for greenstuff. His mind at last at perfect ease, he slept the sleep of the righteous: sweetly dreaming of the halcyon sunny days when he could put the winner of the Corinthian Cup on the field, and die happy when the classical race had been won. Combined with the gently-dropping encouragement of Miriam and the effective influences of the trouble-wrought face and the shower of silver sound in the sweet voice of Guinevere, the sedulous attention which he bestowed on that little mare had a most marvellous and salutary effect upon the ambrosial Brosie. "No more wild oats for me," he would say to himself, page 337as he tried to learn off by heart the stud-book in bed with a candle: "No more threes and fours for amber, "as he blew out the light and turned on his side to sleep as peacefully as little Pearly and Valentine themselves. Not a drum was heard at eve, not a bugle-call at morn, as he ruminated over the golden opportunities which he had lost, wasted, or thrown away while he had bowed his knee to the Moloch8 of drink desiccating the life-blood of his veins. He resolved with an inflexible will to waste the days of his youth no more. Stage of improvement followed upon stage of improvement in his bodily health. Cycle of moral amelioration followed upon cycle of moral amelioration, all treading towards one of the greatest blessings which mankind can enjoy—mens sana in corpore sano et mens conscia recti.9

Brosie was not, however, transformed all at once; the change came by a process of "pegging" and shuttlecocking. It is not in man to perfect all the multifarious resolutions and achievements germane to any mammoth change in his life without feeling recalcitrant impulses to temporarily recoil, to pause in the uphill struggle and in most cases to fall back into the precarious territory of pusillanimity and doubt. Intoxicated with the presentiments of a better life, all his old cravings and the briars and thorns of his existence began to slowly disappear like morning mists, and by degrees his re-modelled principles crystallized into the shape of coherent custom.

"Men may rise on stepping-stones
From their dead selves to higher things."10

Within six months from the date of the maiden plate Brosie was as engaging and handsoms a young gentleman as ever opened an office as a surgical dentist—the stamp of a man that gave everybody the impression that unaided he could cut his way through the world as if it were made of green cheese. Circumspect in every action, unalloyed in every thought, honourable and high-minded, he was a pattern of the noblest work of the Creator—in form and moving how express and admirable!11 Forsaking the sirens behind the bars, he chose for his associations the noble, the ambitious and the good. His most constant companions were gentlemen of his own and other professions, and he was universally respected and esteemed by all with whom he came in contact.

In a short space of time he was enabled to re-establish himself in his avocation, and he quickly brought together under his professional attentions a goodly number of clients. He engaged rooms for dental purposes in Broad Street, New Orleans. Not many months had elapsed before he was considered superior by far to most of the leading dentists in the city. Thriving and prosperous, he looked with the qualms of remorse back on the days when he covered his theretofore untarnished character with shame and ignominy. Like smelted gold from the furnace he emerged into what his inborn penchant always seemed to cherish—a young gentleman who knew how to conduct himself and his business with honourable dealing and skill. The oft-reiterated orisons at the tomb of his brother, speaking as if by spiritual telepathy to him from the grave, and the earnest outpouring page 338of the heart of Miriam to Heaven, assisted by the loving-kindness of Guinevere, were at last accorded a well-deserved answer.

Dating his beloved son's reform from the day he took the dark chestnut in hand as a trainer, his old father, whose head was now hoary with care and anxiety as he withered into the sear the yellow leaf, abstractedly patted and praised that dear old mare for the indirect good she had done. She was then not worth more than a hundred dollars, but it is a question if he would have parted with her for a thousand. Rosie was a ray of sunshine, shining like a dancing sunbeam over the ebb-tide and through the vistas of his dull declining days, while avarice, to Christopher William Whitworth, was a thing altogether unknown.

1 A clay-like mineral: orthorhombic hydrated magnesium trisilicate. Often used for pipe bowls. OED Online.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

2 Storm and stress. Jones 1963:381.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

3 Alice Hawthorn was an English racehorse, 1838-1861, raced in the 1840s. For Kirkconnel see note to Book 1, Chapter 13. The match is impossible.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

4 A horse which will be sold after a race. OED Online.vbl. n., sense c.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

5 Uncertain (tristement, French, is 'sadly').

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

6 The art of horsemanship. Jones 1963:296.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

7 As well as being used for many human ailments, Epsom salt was applied in several ways to animals. See for example The Queenslander May 1885.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

8 A cruel idol of the Old Testament; also Molech. OED Online.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

9 A sound mind in a sound body and a mind conscious of uprightness. Jones 1963:70.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

10 In Memoriam A. H. H. Alfred Lord Tennyson.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

11 Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.ii.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]