Both critters crawl about the
house, and ain't very attractive to look at, and both turn out so fine
and so painted when they go abroad, you don't scarcely know them agin.
Both, too, when they get out of doors, seem to have no other airthly
object but to show themselves. They don't go straight there and back
again, as if there was an end in view, but they first flaunt to the
right, and then to the left, and then everywhere in general, and yet
nowhere in particular. To be seen and admired is the object of both.
They are all finery, and that is so in their way they can neither sit,
walk, nor stand conveniently in it. They are never happy, but when on
the wing."
"Oh, Lord!" said the doctor to himself, who seemed to think aloud; "I
wonder if that is a picture or a caricature?"
Thinks I, "old boy, you are sold. I said that a purpose to find you
out, for I am too fond of feminine gender to make fun of them. You are
a single man. If you was married, I guess you wouldn't ask that are
question."
But I went on. "Now a horse is different, you never get tired of a
good one. He don't fizzle out1 like the rest. You like him better and
better every day. He seems a part of yourself; he is your better half,
your 'halter hego' as I heard a cockney once call his fancy gall.
1 Fizzle out. To prove a failure.
"This bein' the case, as I was a sayin', as soon as a man gits a new
one, he wants to try him.
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