Hjalmar H. Boyesen

“ O'Flaherty's namesake, the mare, whom he held to be vaguely responsible for the troubles that had overtaken him. It was her unfortunate existence which had involved him with his uncongenial matrimonial partner. With her one erect and one recumbent ear Molly had an air of meditation, of impartial, yet not unsympathetic judgment, which was calculated to encourage confidences.
"Jimmy, my dear," her expression seemed to say, "you are a sad case with your sprees and your quarrelsome temper. It is useless to pretend that I approve of you. ”

“ Molly, his mare, the only creature for whose opinion he greatly cared, had not the heart to add insult to injury. She only shook her aged, frowsy head, raised one ear, while the other hung limply down, and gazed at her master with mild disapprobation.
"I know what ye be wantin to say, auld girrel," Jim would observe ruefully, when Molly shook her head at him; "ye be wantin to say that Oi be a good-furr-nothin cowarrd, Molly, me beauty. Say it, auld girrel, say it. Oi can stand it from you bitter than from the rist." ”

“ The old mare was never in a hurry; nor was Jim. He sat in the bottom of his rickety wagon, smoking plug tobacco out of a short clay pipe, and conversing with himself or with Molly, whose one backward-pointed ear seemed an evidence of attention. It was during one of these confidential harangues that he was, one day in January, hailed by a man, who asked him to drive over to Hoboken, to the dock of one of the European steamship companies, and get him four trunks which, for some reason, had failed to arrive, though they had been examined by the custom-house officer. ”