Smyrna times., 1880-11-03
Can Women Drive.
AN OLD LIvERYMANs EXPERIENCE OF THE SEX

AN OLD LITERYMAN's EXPERIENCE OF THE SEX
81 Isn't it rather singular that women
never learn how to drive horse properly ?"
remarks some irate man as he inspects
tired animal, and finds the bride over its
ears, and the bit half way down its throat.
But women can driver cries a cham
plon OF the sex. Don't they drive seven
or eight miles to mark with vegetables or
loads of hay? Don't they take their babies
out to ride whenever they can get hold of
horse? Why there never was q woman
who couldn't drive, and some of them can
handle horse much better than their hus.
bands can"
Can women drive? and do you let them
handle your best horses p were the CUES.
tlons put to good-natured livery keeper
by of an interested party.
Drive" answered the letterout of
equines, 81 should think they could, but
as for letting them our best horses, that is
another matter. We have horses in our
stable few men could drive. We keen
what we call safe horses for ladies' use
the kind that will go anywhere if YOU
just guide them-old family nags, sensible
enough to trot along and mind their own
business, and not fret if they are pulled
two ways at once"
DO you object to letting horses out for
women to driven
No, indeed we have from twelve to
fifteen ladies week who come to us for
horses, and we give them good ones, too,
but somehow women fret horses when thew
drive them, 30 we don't care to give them
high spirited animals. Now, look at that
sorrel," pointing to one from which the
harness had just been removed. 81 let
that horse this morning to bit of woman
with wrists no bigger than my two fingers
| didn't want to let it go because it's such
an ugly puller. | told her it had mouth
like iron, but she said she wanted to take
an old aunt who was visiting her out to see
the town, and she drove off quietly enough.
but half an hour afterwards | saw her
coming down Woodward avenue like a
streak of lightning, everybody running to
get out of the way, and that old aunt
hanging on for her life, She just had the
lines wound round those little wrists, and
braced her feet on the dashboard, and
when she came to corner whisked round
it on one wheel. The rig came in all right,
but that horse won't get its breath for a
week."
Do they often meet with accidents, and
have smash up?'
No. 1t it curious, but woman will
take team through dozen hairbreadth
escapes and bring it back all right. We
| have any amount of trouble with men,
who take our best rigs, get on a spree and
break things all to pieces. woman is
either more cautious, or she will call upon
every man in sight to help her out of a
scrape. They are more apt to lose their
heads in a crowd or collision, but there is
most always some special providence on
hand to help them. If you notice, the
most disastrous runaways happen when
some man has the reins."
Further talk developed the fact that
women were not considerable in their man.
agement of horses. They forget to blanket
them in winter and to tie them in the
shade in the summer. They sometimes
use the lines as hitching straps, and have a
settled dislike to learning proper names
for harness. Not one in hundred could
tell the difference between the surcinele
and the martingale, or had the slightest
idea to which end of the animal the crup.
per belonged, and if compelled to divest a
horse of its trippings would undo every
buckle in the service and take the collar
off over the animals head, to all which the
intelligent beast would submit, as if charm.
ed, by being steadily talked to during the
process in the betwitching tones of a
woman's voice.
All of this may be libel on the sex,
but it is certainly true when an old family
morse, with ten minute gate comes see
saving down the street, with comically
reckless air of running away, a woman's
head looking out from under the buggy top,
a woman's hand guides the steed in its &c.
centric orbit, and woman's voice shouts
in distinct tones, Wh.o-oa.a," at the
same moment that the reins are jerked and
the whip applied, while pedestrians scud to
the sidewalk in terror. However liable q
womanis to run over COW, or street car,
she will always stop and turn out for a
baby. This is one of the instincts of her
maternal heart, to which even "get up
gl.ang" is sacrificed.