FAULTS INSEPARABLE FROM STABLES. 235 



and wlien quoting it, the present writer will, so far as may be prudent, 

 forbear to adduce his personal opinions. 



Concerning doors, permitting egress from and allowing entrance into 

 stables, Professor Stewart directs that these should be made "eight or 

 eight and a half feet high and five feet wide." The dimensions here 

 laid down are evidently regarded as large or of model amplitude ; for, 

 subsequently, we are informed "accidents often happen from having 

 doors too low and too narrow." Aware, therefore, of the necessity for 

 space, the Professor must have imagined he had allowed room sufficient 

 to anticipate those accidents which he was contemplating, when the 

 passage was indited. The reader may, therefore, reasonably conjecture 

 that, when proposing the above measurement, the Professor not only 

 thought he had permitted every requisite freedom, but that he had even 

 provided large marginal capacity for extraordinary occasions. 



Certainly, when compared with the vast majority of existing door- 

 ways, the proposed entrance may be viewed as exceeding the utmost 

 limit of boundless liberality. The next sentence encountered in the 

 book already referred to, apprises the reader that " three feet six inches 

 is the usual width of a stable doorway; a few are four feet." Conse- 

 quently, the author of " Stable Economy," warming as he contemplates 

 the munificence of his conception, adds, "no care is necessary, when taking 

 a horse through a space five feet wide and eight feet six inches high !" 



Nevertheless, though the difference between the height and bulk of 

 man and horse is altogether in favor of the animal, there are many doors 

 admitting people to human habitations, which considerably exceed the 

 dimensions laid down by a kindly disposed and an amiable writer, as 

 the utmost space necessary for man and horse, simultaneously, to pass 

 through. Within the domiciles of the lesser creature, it is by no means 

 a rarity to discover entrances of a much greater height than Professor 

 Stewart allows his imaginary model stable to possess. 



Many gentlemen love to own tall horses. Persons having such a 

 taste will not look at an animal unless it stands sixteen hands high; 

 or unless it will measure five feet four inches from the top margin of the 

 withers to the ground. The foregoing measurement, however, does not 

 allow for the head and neck, which, though not reckoned in the general 

 estimate of equine altitude, still cannot be left behind when the horse 

 quits the stable. Some animals exceed sixteen hands : such quadrupeds, 

 if they carried high crests, would have to lower their ears when passing 

 under one of those beams which the learned Professor evidently intended 

 to be so lofty as should release the groom from every care, and free him 

 from all responsibility. 



It is by no means unusual to encounter a man who stands more than 



