Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy
in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and
sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the
sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding
floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving-
man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God
according to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism
is always colored by the petals of his flowers,--and Nature never shows
him a black corolla.
Perhaps he may have little or nothing to do in this narrative; but as
there must be some who confound the New-England _hired man_,
native-born, with the _servant_ of foreign birth, and as there is the
difference of two continents and two civilizations between them, it did
not seem fair to let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky
without touching his features in half-shadow into our background.
The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by her master from her
cinnamon color, cassia being one of the professional names for that
spice or drug. She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an
Englishman would perhaps say, chestnut,--a genuine "Morgan" mare, with
a low forehand, as is common in this breed, but with strong quarters
and flat hocks, well ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively
ears,--a first-rate doctor's beast,--would stand until her harness
dropped off her back at the door of a tedious case, and trot over hill
and dale thirty miles in three hours, if there was a child in the next
county with a bean in its windpipe and the Doctor gave her a hint of
the fact.
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