h,
seeing as how I am sixty-nine, and am rather too old to ride--yes,
cherish and take care of your horse as perhaps the best friend you have
in the world; for, after all, who will carry you through thick and thin
as your horse will? not your gentlemen friends, I warrant, nor your
housekeeper, nor your upper servants, male or female; perhaps your lady
would, that is, if she is a wopper, and one of the right sort; the others
would be more likely to take up mud and pelt you with it, provided they
saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse, and
feed him every day with your own hands; give him three-quarters of a peck
of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chaff, and allow him besides
one hundred weight of hay in the course of the week; some say that the
hay should be hardland hay, because it is wholesomest, but I say, let it
be clover hay, because the horse likes it best; give him through summer
and winter, once a week, a pailful of bran mash, cold in summer and in
winter hot; ride him gently about the neighbourhood every day, by which
means you will give exercise to yourself and horse, and, moreover, have
the satisfaction of exhibiting yourself and your horse to advantage, and
hearing, perhaps, the men say what a fine horse, and the ladies saying
what a fine man: never let your groom mount your horse, as it is ten to
one, if you do, your groom will be wishing to show off before company,
and will fling your horse down. I was groom to a gemman before I went to
the inn at Hounslow, and flung him a horse down worth ninety guineas, by
endeavouring to show off before some ladies that I met on the road. Turn
your horse out to grass throughout May and the first part of June, for
then the grass is sweetest, and the flies don't sting so bad as they do
later in summer; afterwards merely turn him out occasionally in the swale
of the morn and the evening; after September the grass is good for
little, lash and sour at best; every horse should go out to grass, if not
his blood becomes full of greasy humours, and his wind is apt to become
affected, but he ought to be kept as much as possible from the heat and
flies, always got up at night, and never turned out late in the
year--Lord! if I had always such a nice attentive person to listen to me
as you are, I could go on talking about 'orses to the end of time.'

CHAPTER XXVI

THE STAGE-COACHMEN OF ENGLAND--A BULLY SERVED OUT--BROUGHTON'S GUARD--THE