Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/162

Rh blood streaming from them. The whiffle-tree would swing round and hit them, and when their collars were taken off, their necks would be raw and bloody. After a time, the men got to understand how to drive a coach, and the horses did not suffer so much.

The other story was about a team-boat, not a steam-boat. More than seventy years ago, they had no steamers running between Fairport and the island opposite where people went for the summer, but they had what they called a team-boat, that is, a boat with machinery to make it go, that could be worked by horses. There were eight horses that went around and around, and made the boat go. One afternoon, two dancing masters who were wicked fellows that played the fiddle, and never went to church on Sundays, got on the boat, and sat just where the horses had to pass them as they went around.

Every time the horses went by, they jabbed them with their penknives. The man who was driving the horses at last saw the blood dripping from them, and the dancing masters were found out. Some young men on the boat were so angry, that they caught up a rope's end, and gave the dancing masters a lashing, and then threw them into the water and made them swim to the island.

When this boy took his seat, a young girl read some verses that she had clipped from a newspaper.

Don't kill the toads, the ugly toads, That hop around your door, Each meal the little toad doth eat A hundred bugs or more.

He sits around with aspect meek, Until the bug hath neared, Then shoots he forth his little tongue Like lightning double-geared.