Friday, July 27, 2012

what to do with a snake-bitten horse

Tennyson, Smoking
See how Cooke's careful and elaborately described treatment of a snake-bitten horse, back in July 1843, gets worked into the fictionalized dialogue between the Captain and his "Imaginary Friend" in the entry for October 7, 1843:

July 10
"... Just as I arrived on the Camp ground this evening a rattle snake struck a valuable led horse of mine in the rim of the nostril; I immediately scarified it deeply with my penknife, and had it copiously washed until—fifteen minutes after—the hospital wagon arrived, and I procured some ammonia, which I applied until the skin came off (which it soon did).  After swelling for twenty minutes, it is getting well."
(Cooke's 1843 journal)

October 7 
... After supper—The Hunter in the mouth of his tent reclines, with a pipe, upon a glossy bearskin;—before him, a desert expanse of grass and river;—his attention is apparently divided between the moon, suspended over the western hills; the flickering blaze of a small fire, and the curling smoke which he deliberately exhales. His friend stirs a toddy, reading with difficulty a crabbed manuscript.
Loquitur. "When I saw you yesterday, beside your usual duties, acting as guide, surgeon,—(for you have effectually cured the snake-bitten horse)as hunter, or as butcher"—
"Say commissary!"
"I conceived hopes of you, that the poetic spirit was layed; and when at supper to-night you ate so heartily of the elk-steak, I little thought you had been indulging again in such pathetic"—
"Pshaw! it serves for a gilding to Life's bitter pill! The delicious supper should have mended your humour: for I stake my reputation on it— as 'guide, surgeon and hunter'"—
Imaginary Friend. "And butcher"—
—"That the flesh, cooked, as it was, with a little pork, cannot be distinguished from that of the fattest buffalo cow that ever surrendered tongue and marrow-bones to hungry hunter."
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," January 1852) and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army
Wonderful!

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