led, nor indeed expected, to do so; but I took pleasure in the
occupation; and I remember at that period one of the principal objects of
my ambition was to be a first-rate groom, and to make the skins of the
creatures I took in hand look sleek and glossy like those of moles. I
have said that I derived valuable hints from the old man, and, indeed,
became a very tolerable groom, but there was a certain finishing touch
which I could never learn from him, though he possessed it himself, and
which I could never attain to by my own endeavours; though my want of
success certainly did not proceed from want of application, for I have
rubbed the horses down, purring and buzzing all the time, after the
genuine ostler fashion, until the perspiration fell in heavy drops upon
my shoes, and when I had done my best, and asked the old fellow what he
thought of my work, I could never extract from him more than a kind of
grunt, which might be translated: 'Not so very bad, but I have seen a
horse groomed much better,' which leads me to suppose that a person, in
order to be a first-rate groom, must have something in him when he is
born which I had not, and, indeed, which many other people have not who
pretend to be grooms. What does the reader think?

CHAPTER XXV

STABLE HARTSHORN--HOW TO MANAGE A HORSE ON A JOURNEY--YOUR BEST FRIEND

Of one thing I am certain, that the reader must be much delighted with
the wholesome smell of the stable, with which many of these pages are
redolent; what a contrast to the sickly odours exhaled from those of some
of my contemporaries, especially of those who pretend to be of the highly
fashionable class, and who treat of reception-rooms, well may they be
styled so, in which dukes, duchesses, earls, countesses, archbishops,
bishops, mayors, mayoresses--not forgetting the writers themselves, both
male and female--congregate and press upon one another; how cheering, how
refreshing, after having been nearly knocked down with such an
atmosphere, to come in contact with genuine stable hartshorn. Oh! the
reader shall have yet more of the stable, and of that old ostler, for
which he or she will doubtless exclaim, 'Much obliged!'--and lest I
should forget to perform my promise, the reader shall have it now.

I shall never forget an harangue from the mouth of the old man, which I
listened to one warm evening as he and I sat on the threshold of the
stable, after having attended to some of the wants of a ba