The Kemper herald. (Scooba, Miss.) 1875-1908, 1907-08-01
HORSE AND AUTO VHIhS.
MoroRlsT coNFEssEs WHY HE
PREFERS THE MACHINE.

MoToRIsT %coNFEssEs WHY HE
PREFERS THE MACHINE.
You Never Can Tell What An Animal
VIII Do-Better a Crotchety Auto
mobile Than a crotchety Horse.
YOU'D think from what you read
In the papers," said a man with the
motor bug, that the only men hav-
ing trouble on the road were the
men driving automobiles, but really
ia rather take my. chances of get
ting somewhere with my nifty little
thoroughly overhauled second hand
motor car than / would with many a
horse I've driven.
"Why 1t makes me shudder, even
now, to think Of the times we used
to have with some of the horses we
used to drive when we lived dn the
suburbs. It was the fashion where
we lived for people to go driving
ON fair Sunday afternoons, and peo-
pie that didn't own their turnouts
used to hire one from the livery sta
BILE, commonly a surrey with one
horse, and take out the whole tam
ily.
1.-THE horses we got were horses
all right, they had four legs and a
head and frequently more or less OF
a tail, but they we're rarely beautiful
and often morose, and when l saw
one of those creatures, standing out
in front waiting for US, throw its
ears forward and twist its neck and
turn its long head toward US and
survey us sourly as we came down
the walk to get into the surrey, why
1 never knew what the beast would
do before we got back, and l always
felt easier when we had followed
the fashion and been to ride and
got back safely home.
Talk about bending your car
bureter and stripping your steering
gear and blowing out your spark
plug! Why those are things you
know something about; but you new
er can tell what a horse is going
to do. He may balk, or back, or
sheer off, or lie down, or do all sorts
of things. When an auto gets to do
ing things like that you may be able
to do something to it, but you can't
do anything to such a horse at all.
eff you p~uncture a tire on the auto,
can't the horse cast a shoe or pick
up a nail or get blind staggers? And
| 49, Lx.l~ lx,r4nx m n rnt0r nI1f nf
sight. No more horse for me.
II remember once-when we were
dr4ving along a three mile straight
stretch of road we couldn't keep the
horse in the road at all. 1t was a
heap easier going there, but he would
persist in steering off, always to the
tight, into the gutter and seeming
always to want to climb the fences
on that side; so that had, SO to
speak, to carry a weather wheel on
him all the time; keep the port rein
pulled hard and taIt to keep him
up to the wind-I mean in the road
at all, and It vas positively irk-
some to have to drive like that, with
the horse all the time wandering off
toward the fences the minute we let
UP on him and we wondering all the
time what could be the matter with
him and whether he would ever go
straight again
1--WE went two miles in that un-
comfortable fashion, till we met a
man walking along the road, who
sang out to us as we passed:
Mister, you got your line twist
ed around the end of the shaft
"And so we had When the horse
a couple of miles back had swung
his head around to bite a fly he had
caught the rein on that side, the
right, around the end of the shaft,
and I'd been driving him with the
reins like that, with that twisted line
pulling him off to the right all the
time. But no automobile would have
sheered off for any such reason as
that.
"Once when we were out and had
got about three-quarters of the way
up a long hill the horse stopped, and
I couldn't get him to bulge. He
wouldn't 90 a step. Worse than that,
pretty soon he began to back.
''There was a deep gutter on each
side of the road at this point, a
regular gully of a gutter, about four
feet deep; and when the noble beast
began to back he Slowed around SO
as to back us down angling from
the crown of the road toward one
of the cutters, till one of the hind
wheels of the surrey was just over
the edge of it, when, mercifully, the
beast stopped. 1t might not nave
killed us all if the horse had backed
us into this ravine, but it would have
smashed the carriage; and when the
surrey stopped there on the brink
the folks got scared and all jumped
out and stood around-a nice way OF
taking a ride this, hey?-while l led
the horse away from the gutter up
into the middle of the road again.
He wouldn't let me drive him, but
he would let me lead him-that much.
"But when we all got in again and
tried to start the horse up he just
began backing again; he simply
wouldn't go ahead; and we had to
turn him around and start for home.
IF. uyJIIgn~ RI orr down tho hill