Good Morning, Mr Horse, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Whippletrees in the Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum in Detmold, Germany.

Whippletrees in the Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum in Detmold, Germany. Whippletrees (or whiffletrees, as Hawthorne calls them here) are bars that form part of the harness that allows a horse to draw a carriage or some other kind of load. Hawthorne’s weary nag, so the young writer tells us in his diary, had tried to lash out at his cruel master, but his feet had reached no higher than these low bars.

Good Morning, Mr Horse

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I then asked if his master whipped him. “Not much lately; he used to, till my hide got hardened, but now he has a white oak goad stick with an iron brad in its end, with which he jabs my hind quarters, and hurts me awfully.” I asked why he did not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. “I did try to once,” said he, “but am old and was weak, and could only get my heels high enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and, getting a cudgel, struck me over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just before Mr Ben Ham’s house, and I should have been finished, and ready for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life; but I was sorry, though Mr Ham meant good.” The goad with the iron brad was in the wagon, and, snatching it out, I struck the end against a stone, and the stabber flew into the mill-pond. “There,” says I, “old colt,” as I threw the goad back into the wagon, “he won’t harpoon you again with that iron.” The poor old brute knew what I said well enough, for I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language.

by Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864

From the diary of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), as given in Hawthorne’s First Diary, With an Account of Its Discovery and Loss by Samuel Thomas Pickard (1828-1915).

* The whiffletrees are the bars on the straps or ‘traces’ that attach a horse to the cart behind it. Properly speaking, the phrase ‘kicking over the traces’ refers to the same action: lashing out at the thongs that bind a beast to its burden, that is, defiance or rebellion.

Précis

Nathaniel now learnt that years of thrashing had made the horse’s hide so thick that his master used a metal spike: he was too old and weak, it seemed, to rebel, and even regretted that a kind bystander had saved him from being killed. At this, Nathaniel indignantly broke the prod, jerking the sharp point into a pond.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

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