Band books

' and perhaps have better
luck."
Wednesday, the 7th, I went to see the new team. I found a pair of
flea-bitten gray Flemish mares, weighing about twenty-eight hundred
pounds. They were four years old, short of leg and long of body, and
looked fit. The surgeon passed them sound, and said he considered them
well worth the price asked,--$300. I was pleased with the team, and
remembered a remark I had heard as a boy from an itinerant Methodist
minister at a time when the itinerant minister was supposed to know all
there was to know about horse-flesh. This was his remark: "There was
never a flea-bitten mare that was a poor horse." In spite of its
ambiguity, the saying made an impression from which I never recovered. I
always expected great things from flea-bitten grays.
The team, wagon, harness, etc., added $395 to the debit account against
the farm. Polly secured her girl,--a green German who had not been long
enough in America to despise the country.
"She doesn't know a thing about our ways," said Polly, "but Mrs.
Thompson can train her as she likes.


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