I refer to Pearl, the mare. Pearl was an elderly mare,
white in color and therefore known as Pearl. She was most gentle
and kind. She was a reliable family animal too--had a colt every
year--but in her affiliations she was a pronounced reactionary.
She went through life listening for somebody to say Whoa! Her ears
were permanently slanted backward on that very account. She
belonged to the Whoa Lodge, which has a large membership among
humans.
Riding behind Pearl you uttered the talismanic word in the thinnest
thread of a whisper and instantly she stopped. You could spell
Whoa! on your fingers, and she would stop. You could take a pencil
and a piece of paperout of your pocket and write down Whoa!--and
she would stop; but, compared with a sample assortment of these
cabaret satellites, Pearl would have seemed deaf as a post. Clear
across a hundred-foot dance-hall they catch the sound of a restless
dollar turning over in the fob pocket of an American tourist.
And they come a-running and get it. Under the circumstances it
requires self-hypnotism of a high order, and plenty of it, to make
an American think he is enjoying himself. Still, he frequently
attains to that happy comsummation. To begin with, is he not in
Gay Paree?--as it is familiarly called in Rome Center and all
points West? He is! Has he not kicked over the traces and cut loose
with intent to be oh, so naughty for one naughty night of his life?
Such are the facts.
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