THE BLACKSMITH 191 



that is nails. The best and neatest of shoes are 

 useless without good nails, just as the best and 

 neatest of biped ones are useless without strings or 

 fastenings of some sort. Now it is a notorious fact, 

 though we dare say Elijah Bullwaist will deny it, that 

 the same man cannot make both shoes and nails. 

 Bullwaist will make what he calls nails just as he 

 makes what he calls shoes, but if any of our readers 

 will pop into a veterinary forge, or well-conducted 

 smithy, he will find making nails and making shoes 

 are distinct departments, nay, in many, that making 

 nails, making shoes, and putting them on, constitute 

 three separate branches. Let the shoes be ever so 

 good and ever so well put on, it is clear that they are 

 of no use, especially for hunters, unless they will stay 

 on, and that staying on depends almost entirely upon 

 the make and quality of the nails. 



We do not know a more graceless, thankless office, 

 than telling a man he has lost a shoe, particularly if 

 the discovery is made in the middle of a run. We 

 wonder if any person ever got thanked for such 

 information. Shoe losing is one of the drawbacks 

 upon foxhunting, and one of the greatest arguments 

 for the second horse system. A man with a second 

 horse looks at his nag's feet at a check with very 

 different feelings to the man who has merely a spare 

 shoe at his saddle. The man with his Groom behind 

 him with a second horse can afford to be civil when 

 he is told he has lost a shoe : he has nothing to do 

 but change horses, just as he would change his plate 

 at dinner. But the man with but one horse, no spare 

 shoe, and no knowledge of where a blacksmith is to 

 be found, has a very dejected melancholy air as he 

 turns from the hounds and rides about among the 

 country people, asking if they can tell him " where to 

 find a smith ? " Shoe cases are now so common that 

 the exception is seeing a saddle without one, and 

 there are divers patent contrivances extant for self- 



