For, although she was again covertly
introduced on the platform by the Bungstarters, and placed face to
face with Colonel Starbottle at Murphy's Camp, she was dumb. Even
a brass band failed to excite her emulation. Either she had become
disgusted with politics or the higher prices paid by the party to
other and less effective speakers aroused her jealousy and shocked
her self-esteem, but she remained a passive spectator. When the
Hon. Sylvester Rourback, who received, for the use of his political
faculties for a single night, double the sum for which she was
purchased outright, appeared on the same platform with herself, she
forsook it hurriedly and took to the woods. Here she might have
starved but for the intervention of one McCarty, a poor market
gardener, who found her, and gave her food and shelter under the
implied contract that she should forsake politics and go to work.
The latter she for a long time resisted, but as she was considered
large enough by this time to draw a cart, McCarty broke her to
single harness, with a severe fracture of his leg and the loss of
four teeth and a small spring wagon.
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