He read much in those last years in science.  When he was not reading Trowbridge to his grandchildren, it was Huxley to himself.  But when his eyes grew tired, he would on an occasion—­if there was canning in the house—­go into the kitchen where my mother and grandmother worked, and help pare the fruit.  Seriously, as though he were engaged upon a game, he would cut the skin into thinnest strips, unbroken to the end, and would hold up the coil for us to see.  Or if he broke it in the cutting it was a point against him in the contest.

His diversion rather than his profit was the care and rental of about twenty small houses, some of which he built to fit his pensioners.  My brother and myself often made the rounds with him in the phaeton.  At most of the houses he was affectionately greeted as “Jedge” and was held in long conversations across the fence.  And to see an Irishman was to see a friend.  They all knew him and said, “Good mornin’,” as we passed.  He and they were good Democrats together.

I can see in memory a certain old Irishman in a red flannel shirt, with his foot upon the hub, bending across the wheel and gesticulating in an endless discussion of politics or crops, while my brother and I were impatient to be off.  Dolly was of course patient, for she had long since passed her fretful youth.  If by any biological chance it had happened that she had been an old lady instead of a horse, she would have been the kind that spent her day in a rocker with her knitting.  Any one who gave Dolly an excuse for standing was her friend.  There she stood as though she wished the colloquy to last forever.

It was seldom that Dolly lost her restraint.  She would, indeed, when she came near the stable, somewhat hasten her stride; and when we came on our drives to the turning point and at last headed about for home, Dolly would know it and show her knowledge by a quickening of the ears and the quiver of a faint excitement.  Yet Dolly lost her patience when there were flies.  Then she threw off all repression and so waved her tail that she regularly got it across the reins.  This stirred my grandfather to something not far short of anger.  How vigorously would he try to dislodge the reins by pulling and jerking!  Dolly only clamped down her tail the harder.  Experience showed that the only way was to go slowly and craftily and without heat or temper—­a slackening of the reins—­a distraction of Dolly’s attention—­a leaning across the dashboard—­a firm grasping of the tail out near the end—­a sudden raising thereof.  Ah!  It was done.  We all settled back against the cushions.  Or perhaps a friendly fly would come to our assistance and Dolly would have to use her tail in another direction.

The whip was seldom used.  Generally it stood in its socket.  It was ornamental like a flagstaff.  It forgot its sterner functions.  But Dolly must have known the whip in some former life, for even a gesture toward the socket roused her.  If it was rattled she mended her pace for a block.  But if on a rare occasion my grandfather took it in his hand, Dolly lay one ear back in our direction, for she knew then he meant business.  And what an excitement would arise in the phaeton!  We held on tight for fear that she might take it into her mild old head to run away.