187 



It is yet more important to superintend both his 

 dressing and feeding, when he arrives at an inn. 

 I never trust this to an ostler, nor even to my own 

 servant. I stand by, and watch the whole cere- 

 mony. Good policy as well as humanity dictates 

 this precaution ; for of all the annoyances to which 

 a traveller is subject, none is more intolerable than 

 to find his horse disabled, probably by a chill (as 

 it is technically called) at a dull country inn. 

 Three days' penance, gaping at a well-thumbed, 

 ereasy, provincial newspaper, threading the dirty, 

 smoky passages from the coffee-room to the stable 

 and back, in feverish impatience for the hourly 

 bulletin : prosing consultations on drenches, balls, 

 and diuretics, with the village cow-leech ; muzzing 

 over a gloomy fire, amidst fumes of stale tobacco, 

 or the unsavoury nose-bag of a farmers' ordinary 

 on market day ; fumbling the fingers in the breeches 

 pockets, in sad anticipation of landlord's, farrier's, 

 and ostler's fees absorbing all their contents : — such 

 are a few of the miseries, all of which might have 

 been saved by a httle self-denial in postponing 

 your own dinner to your horse's, and in attending 

 to his animal comforts in preference to yourself. 



It is not enough to order the corn, or even to 

 examine its quality, and see it given ; the traveller 

 must see it eaten. Even where ostlers are honest. 



