"It is to be hoped that he would learn a lesson," said the president,
"and be kinder to his horse in the future. Now, Bernard Howe, your
story."
The boy was a brother to the little girl who had told the monkey story,
and he, too, had evidently been talking to his grandfather. He told two
stories, and Miss Laura listened eagerly, for they were about Fairport.
The boy said that when his grandfather was young, he lived in Fairport,
Maine. On a certain day he stood in the market square to see their first
stage-coach put together. It had come from Boston in pieces, for there
was no one in Fairport that could make one. The coach went away up into
the country one day, and came back the next. For a long time no one
understood driving the horses properly, and they came in day after day
with the 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 steamboat. 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.
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