THE ROAD. 
It requires, also, some art to load a coach properly. 
A waggoner on country roads always puts the greater 
weight over his hinder- wheels, being the highest ; and 
he is right, for he has obstacles to meet, and the 
power necessary to overcome them diminishes with the 
increased diameter of the wheel. On our turnpike 
roads, however, where there is now no obstacle, the load 
on a coach should be condensed as much as possible, 
and the heaviest packages placed in the fore-boot. 
Indeed, all the heavier packages should be put into the 
boots, and the lighter ones only on the roof. A well- 
loaded coach is sure to follow well, and is always 
pleasant to ride in ; and as a weak child totters less 
when it has a weight on its head, coach-springs break 
less frequently with a moderately heavy and well-ad- 
justed load than with a light one. 
Allowance is made for the retarding power of friction 
in all kinds of machinery, and of course it is not over- 
looked in carriages. The coachman sees its effect 
every time he puts the drag-chain on his wheel, which 
the shaft is nearly even with the top of the fore-wheel ; but when the horse 
exerts his strength to move a load, he brings his breast so much nearer the 
ground, that the line of draught is almost horizontal, and in a line with its 
centre. The trace of a coach-horse, when he stand* at rest, is also oblique 
to the horizon, and must be so with low fore-wheels ; but it approaches the 
horizontal when he is at work, and the nearer it approaches to it the better. 
Horses draw by their weight, and not by the force of their muscles ; the 
hinder feet, then, being the fulcrum of the lever by which their weight 
acts against a load, when they pull hard it depresses their chests thus 
increasing the lever of its weight, and diminishing the lever by which the 
load resists its efforts. 
