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July 21, 2007
Mark Twain on Horses and Mules
Some of Mark Twain's funniest stories are about various encounters with horses. But since I am currently thinking about mules, I decided to see if he had anything abnormally interesting to say about them. Well, it turns out that he compares them with horses and the horses lose in the comparison.
The following is from an article he wrote for the October 25, 1866 edition of the Sacramento Daily Union. The article recounts his journey to the Kilauea Volcano the previous June.
Brown bought a horse from a native at Waiohinu for twelve dollars, but happening to think of the horse jockeying propensities of the race, he removed the saddle and found that the creature needed "half-soling," as he expressed it. Recent hard riding had polished most of the hide off his back. He bought another and the animal went dead lame before we got to the great volcano, forty miles away. I bought a reckless little mule for fifteen dollars, and I wish I had him yet. One mule is worth a dozen horses for a mountain journey in the Islands.
In the course of the article, he is able to work in a poem that he describes as, "some verses built out of alternate lines from the 'Burial of Sir John Moore' and the 'Destruction of the Sennacherib'."
This account is part of several articles that Twain wrote from Hawaii. He continues the account of the details of the visit to the volcano the Sacramento Daily Union's November 16, 1866 edition.
Posted by Duane Smith at July 21, 2007 3:16 PM | Read more on Mark Twain |
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