CHAPTER X 



THE GROOM 



F half the fellows calling 

 themselves " Grooms " 

 were in their proper 

 places, how well the 

 pigs would be attended 

 to! 



Were it not for the in- 

 consistency of the thing, 

 it would say much for 

 the confiding innocence 

 of human nature, and 

 confidence in mankind, 

 that while some men try, and pause, and deliberate, 

 and hesitate, and call in friends, and, lastly, veterinary 

 surgeons, to examine a horse ere they buy him, they 

 yet can hire a Groom with oftentimes no recom- 

 mendation but the fellow's own. It never seems to 

 strike some men that a horse is a horse, or only half 

 a horse, according to the manner in which he is kept 

 — that you may make one and the same animal two 

 perfectly different creatures, by good grooming and 

 bad; nay, that you may even keep a groggy, half 

 worn out horse on his legs by dint of condition and 

 management. Grooms are as various as geraniums or 

 dahlias — they are of all sorts, from the Stud-Groom of 

 my lord duke, who occasionally condescends to hold a 



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