Will Rogers Writing Style – Example 3: HUMAN INTEREST
We both came from Oklahoma. I
went to Madison Square Garden
in New York with Col. Zack Mulhall in 1905.
Then went on the stage. He didn’t come till 1915, ten years later. He come back with Zack Miller (of the famous Miller Brothers 101 Ranch). I first saw him at a town in Connecticut, I think it was
Westport. I liked him, and he come
home with me, and I think he liked me. And the whole family liked him, and he
lived with us all these years, up to a few days ago, when he left us, and it made us all sad, very sad. He was one of the family, he had helped raise our children, he come to our house the same time Jim, our
youngest, did.
I was working in Ziegfeld’s famous Midnight Frolic (the first of all midnight
shows). We were living in a little home we had rented across the road from Fred
Stone’s lovely summer home at Amityville, Long Island.
We went there to be near Fred and his family. We had a wonderful time
that summer. Jim and Dopey came that summer.
Jim was a baby boy, and Dopey was a little round bodied, coal black pony, with glass eyes, the gentlest and greatest
pony for grownups or children anyone ever saw. I don’t know why we called
him Dopey. I guess it was because he was always so gentle and just the least
bit lazy. Anyhow we meant no disrespect to him.
Dopey belonged to the family. Our children learned to ride at two, and
during his lifetime he never did a wrong thing to throw one off, or do a wrong thing after they had fallen off. He couldn’t pick ‘em up, but he would stand there and look at ‘em with a disgusted look
for being so clumsy as to fall off. He never kicked or stepped on one of them
in his life, and he was a young horse when I first got him from Zack Miller. But
he was always naturally gentle, and intelligent.
I used to sit on him by the hour and try new rope tricks, and he never batted an eye.
Then I learned some trick riding, such as vaulting, and drags, and all that.
In fact he was the only one I could ever do it on. Then in 1919 we went
to California to go in the movies. Dopey
and another pet pony we had acquired for Mary, they occupied the best palace horse car by express. Then I would come back to New York to work another year for
Mr. Ziegfeld in his Follies, and the first thing loaded would be Dopey. Then
after a year in New York back to the movies again, and back would go Dopey,
Dodo, and Chapel, along with any others we had acquired.
One year I took Dopey in a Follies baggage car, on the whole tour with the show, and kept him in the riding academies
and practiced roping every day with him. Charley Aldrich, a cowboy, used to ride
him, and run by for my fancy roping tricks; he has been missed with a loop more times, and maybe caught more times than any
horse living. In a little picture called the “Roping Fool” where
I did all my little fancy catches in slow motion, he was the pony that run for them.
He was coal black, and I had my ropes whitened and the catches showed up fine.
In a private tan bark ring we had in our old Beverly Hills home, all the
children learned trick riding on him, standing up on him running, vaulting, and would use him with Dodo to ride Roman. All allowed because I knew they were on gentle ponies.
He has been set free for four or five years, hasn’t had a bridle on him.
Fat as a pig. When nineteen years of you and your children’s life
is linked so closely with a horse, you can sort of imagine our feelings. We still
have quite a few old favorites left, but Dopey was different. He was of the family. He raised our children. He learned ‘em
to ride. He never hurt one in his life.
He did everything right. That’s a reputation that no human can die
with. Goodbye Dopey, from Mama, Dad, Bill, Mary and Jim.
Excerpted from article published December 16, 1934.
