Recollections of full years (IA recollectionsoff00taft).pdf/143

Exported from Wikisource on November 17, 2024

RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS

size, but I was hardly prepared for the diminutive turnout to which he proudly escorted me. Two little brown ponies, no higher than my shoulder, and with very shaggy manes and foretops, were hitched to a Victoria which had been built to fit them. When I stepped in and sat down, with Charlie on my lap, I felt twice my natural size and it seemed impossible to me that there was still ample room for Mr. Taft.

On the box were two stolid little men, dignified by the titles of coachman and footman. They each wore white linen trousers and thin shirts which hung outside, making them look as if they had forgotten a most important act in the process of dressing. Their bare feet were thrust into heelless red carpet-slippers, while on their heads were wide, flopping, shapeless straw hats which they did not trouble to take off at our approach.

The streets were full of such conveyances as ours, and others of varieties even more astonishing. Maria, with Robert and Helen, followed in a quilez—a miniature, one-horse omnibus affair into which the passengers climbed from the rear. Then there were calesas, caromatas, carretelas and carabao carts.

The carabao carts interested me particularly, and there seemed to be more of them than of anything else. The cart itself was nothing,—just a few planks nailed together and balanced upon a pair of heavy, broad, wooden wheels,—but the beast attached to it was really extraordinary. The first carabao I saw had horns at least six feet across. Indeed, they all have very long horns, and how they keep from obstructing traffic in the narrow streets I never did understand. They do obstruct traffic, as matter of fact, but not with their horns; only with their slow motions. Nobody can possibly know just what the word slow signifies until he has seen a carabao move. Great, grey, thick-skinned, hairless beast; his hide is always caked with mud,

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Table of Contents

Title page

Recollections of full years (IA recollectionsoff00taft).pdf/143

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