EGOTISM NOT IN ALL CASES CENSURABLE. 235 



so we might use the whip and spur' to a horse that 

 nothing else could rouse into activity, and here we 

 should also succeed : but if we used the same means 

 to make a hasty hot horse go quietly, we should, as a 

 matter of course, make him ten times worse ; and 

 why ? simply because he would not know what he 

 was whipped and spurred for : yet I have seen many 

 sapient people adopt this course ; and many equally 

 absurd things are done in the common way of 

 educating, or I should say of spoiling, horses : such 

 men want educating more than they. 



But to revert to my stating that action may be 

 most materially altered, particularly with colts, I 

 shall bring forward a case in point, arid where I 

 completely altered the action of a young horse. 



And here I must implore my reader, in any case 

 where I may be guilty of the egotism of stating what 

 may have occurred to myself, not to attribute my 

 doing so to any improper self-estimation, but mainly 

 to a wish to show, that, where I venture opinions on 

 any subject, I rest such opinions on practical expe- 

 rience, and not on any fancied ingenuity of my own. 



A friend of mine had been for some years in the 

 habit of breeding horses for his own riding on the 

 road: he showed me a particularly handsome well- 

 made four-year-old horse, but who unfortunately had 

 no action : in fact, though his legs were capital and 

 well put on, he used them like a pair of stilts. My 

 friend assured me that but for this he would have 

 been invaluable as a hack. 



This reminded me of an acquaintance who had 

 pleased to take as a cliere amie a lady who was as 

 crooked as (allowing a foot for each turn the height 

 of the human frame will admit of) she could be: he, 



