BUCEPHALUS.

I PASSED the greater part of the summer on my cousin's cattle-ranch in Texas. Among my other memorable exploits there, I bought a Texan pony. To be sure, my early training had not been such as to make me perfect, or even very proficient, in the necessary requirements of the successful horse-dealer. Still it occurred to me that I knew one or two things about a horse; I imagined I could tell one about as far as I could see him. So I viewed my purchase with the air of a connoisseur. I regarded him as entirely an exceptional animal. He seemed to have both shapes and points; and I mentally patted myself on my back as an indication that meditative I approved of what impulsive I had done.

I had an idea, too, that this shaggy little quadruped of mine had a way of being in quite a number of different places in a very short space of time. To be sure, I had never paced him on a regular professional track, but it seemed to me that he was in the habit of marking off the prairies at a remarkably cheerful gait. In short, I looked upon him as quite a jewel in an equine way. So when I came eastward, about the first of September, I brought Ceph (Ceph is familiar for Bucephalus) along with me, and we settled down in a little New Hampshire village, with the intention of wearing away the rest of the vacation there. It was one of those delightful little country places, where on the arrival of a stranger all local industries are for the time suspended until the entire community has informed itself to its utter satisfaction regarding the minutiae of said stranger's life, habits, religious belief, and matrimonial intentions. But they did n't get much out of me. I don't talk very much about myself. I'm not egotistical. I am fully convinced of this, for I've heard myself say it a great many times. But there was one topic which I was perfectly willing to discuss, and that was the general excellence and particular fleetness of my Texan. In fact, I allowed it to be pretty universally understood around the neighborhood that I had a little horse with somewhere from three to five feet on him, which he was in the habit of throwing about with considerable promptitude when occasion required.

But these general, indefinite assertions invariably lose credence as they approach the hyperbolic; hence they fail to carry entire conviction. This was my experience. I saw the necessity of presenting the bald, unerring figures.

Accordingly, one morning I harnessed Ceph to a light, airy sulky, and repaired to the Fair Grounds lying just outside the village. There was no one about. We should have full swing. The track was not in the best of order, but I remarked to Bucephalus, as I patronizingly patted his neck, that really we so seldom touched the ground, it made very little difference to us what condition it was in.

I walked him around the course once, just to show him what he was expected to do, and then going around again to the start, I took the time, and gave him the word. The way that horse shot into space! I felt the sulky lengthening out under me. The pressure of the air was such that my ears, which nature erected at perfectly true right-angles with my head, lay back upon it as flat as if naturally coalescent. I shrieked at the flying steed that perhaps he had better save himself a little. Vain, futile words! they never reached his ears till he went round the track and met them on the other side. He heeded not, nor heard; he merely went, he simply hummed, and I hung on to the dash-board with my teeth, and let him.

As soon after passing the finish as I could, I checked his wild speed, and looked at my watch. Three minutes and five seconds! Subtracting fifteen seconds, which must have elapsed after we crossed the line before I stopped him, it would reduce the time to two minutes and fifty seconds, and my first attempt to trot him on time, too! Oh, I'd soon have him down to two-eight! I waited a moment to give an opportunity to any pieces I might have left behind to overtake us, and then drove townward with a smile of triumph on my face. I stabled the steed, and sallied forth to give voice to the matter.

Sauntering amiably down the street, I encountered the customary group of village worthies busily holding down the mackerel kegs on the corner grocery porch.

"Just seen ye out with that little black of yourn," exclaimed the town undertaker, my last and most cordial acquaintance. "He can git along pretty smart, can't he?"

"Well," I replied, "I can't say that he is in the habit of sitting down very often when he is on the road."

"Ye calc'late ye kin beat 'bout everything 'round here, don't ye?" spoke up the grocer's man in a congratulatory tone of voice, which instantly decided me to purchase, from that time on, all the necessaries of life from his assortment.

"Well, yes, I have yet to hear of anything in these parts that can keep us in sight," I said very modestly.

"Well, jest what time has yer hoss made, any way?" inquired the blacksmith thoughtfully.

"The truth is," said I, "I never allow him to let himself out; I always keep him held right in; but this morning I let him off of a walk for a little while, and he made a mile in two-fifty."

"Two-fifty!" exclaimed the collected chivalry. "Where?"

"Down on the Fair-Ground track," I replied with a nonchalant air.

"On the Fair-Ground track?" interrogatively observed the road-commissioner. "How many times did you go round?"

"Once," I answered.

"Haw!!!" bawled out the entire chorus, "it's only a third-of-a-mile track!"