158 THE ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN 



I cannot dismiss my little horse without mention- 

 ing another incident connected with him, to me par- 

 ticularly interesting. Like most Cantabs, I acquired 

 at college an unlucky taste for driving. I have 

 driven my tandem for many thousand miles in safe- 

 ty, and used at times to exhibit, at once my folly and 

 my skill, by threading the narrowest or most crowd- 

 ed streets in London. It is scarcely necessary to 

 add, that eventually I broke my head; though in 

 justice to my skill, I must declare that the fault was 

 not mine, but my coachmaker's. The splinter-bar 

 had been morticed into the shaft, at the very point 

 where the latter was rendered unsound by a knot in 

 the wood. One day, after a long journey into the 

 country, and within a hundred yards of my own 

 door, the shaft broke, and I was precipitated over 

 the shaft-horse, under the heels of my old favorite. 

 There I lay, insensible. The awkward hands who 

 came to render assistance, wanted (as I was after- 

 wards informed by my servant) to move the horse 

 away from me, at the risk of putting his heels upon 

 my face ; but move he would not ; nor would he allow 

 a foot to be raised, till at last I was fairly lifted up 

 from under him, and then, though not till then, he 



