big for me; and sometimes I wondered if I should not be able to rent it
out to tenants and grow rich on my income, like the Van Rensselaers of
the Manor before the Anti-Rent difficulties.

All the while I was passing outfits which were waiting by the roadside,
or making bad weather of it for some reason or other; or I was passed by
those who had less regard for their horse-flesh than I, or did not
realize that the horses had to go afoot; or those that drew lighter
loads. There were some carriages which went flourishing along with
shining covers; these were the aristocrats; there were other slow-going
rigs drawn by oxen. Usually there would be two or more vehicles in a
train. They camped by the roadside cooking their meals; they stopped at
wayside taverns. They gave me all sorts of how-d'ye-does as I passed.
Girls waved their hands at me from the hind-ends of rigs and said bold
things--to a boy they would not see again; but which left him blushing
and thinking up retorts for the next occasion--retorts that never seemed
to fit when the time came; and talkative women threw remarks at me about
the roads and the weather.

Men tried half a dozen times a day to trade me out of my bay mare Fanny,
or my sorrel mare Flora--they said I ought to match up with two of a
color; and the crow-baits offered me would have stocked a horse-ranch.
People with oxen offered me what looked like good swaps, because they
were impatient to make better time; and as I went along so stylishly I
began turning over in my mind the question as to whether it might not
be better to get to Iowa a little later in the year with cattle for a
start than to rush the season with my fine mares and pull up standing
like a gentleman at my own imaginary door.

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