"'Well, Mr Slick," said the captain, "let us hear your story about the
horse that had a thousand virtues and only one vice."
At the sound of my name, the stranger gave a sudden start and gazed
steadily at me, his eyebrows raised in the extraordinary manner that I
have described, something like the festoon of a curtain, and a smile
playing on his face as if expecting a joke and ready to enter into it,
and enjoy it. All this I observed out of the corner of my eye, without
appearing to regard him or notice his scrutiny.
Sais I, "when I had my tea-store in Boston, I owned the fastest
trotting horse in the United States; he was a sneezer, I tell you. I
called him Mandarin--a very appropriate name, you see, for my
business. It was very important for me to attract attention. Indeed,
you must do it, you know, in our great cities, or you are run right
over, and crushed by engines of more power. Whose horse is that? Mr
Slick's the great tea-merchant. That's the great Mandarin, the fastest
beast in all creation--refused five thousand dollars for him, and so
on. Every wrapper I had for my tea had a print of him on it. It was
action and reaction, you see. Well, this horse had a very serious
fault that diminished his value in my eyes down to a hundred dollars,
as far as use and comfort went. Nothing in the world could ever induce
him to cross a bridge.
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