to
prayers in the library. Immediately after, if we were alone, appeared
the 'farmer' at the door, lantern in hand. 'David, bring me my coat and
stick,' and off he set with him, summer and winter, to visit his horses,
and see that they were all well fed, and comfortable in their regions
for the night. He kept up this custom all his life!"

* * * * *

Sydney Smith, when at Foston, used to exercise his skill in medicine on
the poor, and often did much good; his daughter gives some instances of
his practice as a farrier.

"On one occasion, wishing to administer a ball to Peter the Cruel,[233]
the groom, by mistake, gave him two boxes of opium pills in his bran
mash, which Peter composedly munched, boxes and all. My father, in
dismay, when he heard what had happened, went to look, as he thought,
for the last time on his beloved Peter; but soon found, to his great
relief, that neither boxes nor pills had produced any visible effects on
him. Another time he found all his pigs intoxicated; and, as he
declared, 'grunting "God save the King" about the stye,' from having
eaten some fermented grains which he had ordered for them. Once he
administered castor-oil to the red cow, in quantities sufficient to have
killed a regiment of Christians; but the red cow laughed alike at his
skill and his oil, and went on her way rejoicing."[234]

* * * * *

Sydney Smith tells a story, or made one, of a clergyman who was rather
absent. "I heard of a clergyman who went jogging along the road till he
came to a turnpike. 'What is to pay?'--'Pay, sir, for what?' asked the
turnpike man.--'Why, for my horse, to be sure.'--'Your horse, sir? what
horse? here is no horse, sir.'--'No horse? God bless me!' said he,
suddenly, looking down between his legs, 'I thought I was on
horseback.'"[235]

JUDGE STORY AND THE NAMES HE GAVE HIS HORSES.

The son and biographer of the eminent American judge, Joseph Story,
relates of him[236]--"To dumb creatures he was kind and considerate, and
indignant at any ill usage of them. His sportive nature showed itself in
the nicknames which, in parody of the American fondness of titles, he
gave to his horses and dogs, as, 'The Right Honourable Mr Mouse,' or
'Colonel Roy.'"

WORDSWORTH ON CRUELTY TO HORSES IN IRELAND.

The Rev. Caesar Otway,[237] in a lecture full of interesting anecdotes,
records:--"I remember an observation made to me by one of the m