326 GROOMS. 



and the care of sick horses, except when the trouble is of a 

 serious nature. A position of this kind requires experience, 

 judgment, honesty, sobriety, method and tact, a combination 

 of faculties and acquirements not frequently met with even in 

 much higher walks of life. The desirable men of this class 

 are simple, practical and reliable. These men command a 

 salary of from sixty to eighty dollars per month. They 

 board but do not lodge themselves, and expect to be provided 

 with coal and light or its equivalent in money. 



Flying the same flag, but totally unworthy of their colors, 

 is as worthless a set of arrant rascals as ever drew the breath 

 of life. They usually possess or profess to be blessed with 

 high sounding aristocratic names, moreover they are as 

 arrogant and lazy as they are often able men whose worth 

 has been destroyed by drink or the perverted belief that they 

 belong to the favored class which was born to rule. Besides 

 being lazy they are overbearing with the men under them, 

 and depend largely on the fact of having been at one time in 

 a nobleman's or very rich gentleman's stable for the consid- 

 eration and admiration they endeavor to command. These 

 worthless and discarded servants of sumptuous establish- 

 ments are expensive and demoralizing supernumeraries to any 

 stable, as they are expert extortionists of bribes and com- 

 missions, and set an example in manners and dissipating 

 propensities which cannot fail to have an evil effect on the 

 other employees of the stable. 



GROOMS. 



Grooms are drawn from a class formed by men who are 

 learning their vocation and by those whose march toward a 

 higher goal has been interrupted or terminated in conse- 



