4 Among Men and Horses. 



that school, had their cleverness and intelligence developed 

 to an extraordinary degree, and that they were trustworthy 

 to an extent which horses that are taught to rely on their 

 riders for direction, can never attain. They had only one 

 fault a grave one, I admit, as far as indifferent riders are 

 concerned and that was that any interference with their 

 mouths when they were in the act of jumping, would be liable 

 to make them fall. The fact of his hunter going at a fence, 

 no matter how big it was, never made George Hawkes catch 

 hold of the reins with his only hand, when he wanted to blow 

 the horn or put a lash on the thong of his whip, an operation 

 which he used to do with his fingers and teeth, while he 

 kept the reins hooked on his arm. One of his brothers, Mr 

 Quail Hawkes, has been a well-known coursing judge for 

 many years, and still follows the hounds, whose music first 

 charmed his fancy considerably over sixty years ago. 



Men talk of lifting horses over fences and of making them 

 take-off where they like. They even accuse their best friends 

 of throwing horses down. That reminds me of a story which 

 is not quite new, but which is perhaps fresh enough to serve 

 its turn here. A man once brought a horse with a pair of 

 broken knees to a veterinary surgeon, and told him that his 

 groom, being a bad rider, had thrown the animal down. 

 * You'll do me a great favour,' replied the veterinary surgeon, 

 ' if you'll let me have that groom. I'll be a kind master to 

 him, and will pay him a bit extra ; for he'll save me a lot of 

 money. I have often to get horses thrown for operations, 

 and this strong fellow will be able to do what it now takes 

 three men to perform for me.' Whatever ideas we may have 

 about regulating a horse's speed when he is coming up to a 

 fence, it is incontrovertible that the less we interfere with his 

 mouth when he is in the act of jumping, the less chance will 

 there be of an accident. The great difficulty most men have 

 in giving, as they ought to do, a horse the free use of his head 

 at that critical moment, is, that if they have not the reins to 

 hang on by, they would probably fall off. If any of my 



