"But, I'll tell you what is, if you have got a hoss that
can do it, and no mistake: back him, hoss agin hoss, or
what's safer still, hoss agin time, and you can't be
tricked. Now, I'll send for Old Clay, to come in Cunard's
steamer, and cuss 'em they ought to bring over the old
hoss and his fixins, free, for it was me first started
that line. The way old Mr. Glenelg stared, when I told
him it was thirty-six miles shorter to go from Bristol
to New York by the way of Halifax, than to go direct
warn't slow. It stopt steam for that hitch, that's a
fact, for he thort I was mad. He sent it down to the
Admiralty to get it ciphered right, and it took them old
seagulls, the Admirals a month to find it out.

"And when they did, what did they say? Why, cuss 'em,
says they, 'any fool knows that.' Says I, 'If that's the
case you are jist the boys then that ought to have found
it out right off at oncet.'

"Yes, Old Clay ought to go free, but be won't; and guess
I am able to pay freight for him, and no thanks to nobody.
Now, I'll tell you what, English trottin' is about a mile
in two minutes and forty-seven seconds, and that don't
happen oftener than oncet in fifty years, if it was ever
done at all, for the English brag so there is no telling
right. Old Clay _can_ do his mile in two minutes and
thirty-eight seconds. He _has_ done that, and I guess he
_could_ do more. I have got a car, that is as light as
whalebone, and I'll bet to do it with wheels and drive