STABLE REFORMS. 215 



Back hunter — au animal wliose employers arc not over 

 and above cx'ujraats as to soundness — then £5 and a cab 

 is Ms fate ; and my knowledge of the subject does not 

 permit me to follow him further. Poor brute ! had he 

 been lamer to begin with^ his first owner might have shot 

 him ; but he was just worth selling. To be waked 

 suddenly in the midst of a nightmare is a shock^ but to 

 sleep on is more unpleasant; and I cannot but think 

 that the poor horse^ lately so valuable^ now so much the 

 contrary, would^ even with his limited intellect and 

 natural instinct of self-preservation, welcome the bullet 

 which, crashing through his brain, consigns him to 

 oblivion, could he but foresee even one day of the toil, 

 stripes, and starvation to which he is consigned by his 

 amiable master, who certainly ^' takes no thought of the 

 m.orrow" as far as it concerns his property, when he 

 carelessly remarks to a friend looking over his stud, 

 "That's a nailer, but his day is about done'' (the failing- 

 is here specified, hien entendu that the friend is certain 

 not to become a buyer) ; " I shan't ride him another 

 season." And remember, ye who own a "fine ruin," 

 that the sterling qualities which enabled him, with you 

 on his back, to "see out" all the second horses that 

 day that you " did the trick " so completely to your 

 satisfaction, and to the discomfiture of all your dearest 

 friends (and it is to be hoped that most of us have once 

 in our lives " had the best of it ") will prolong his misery 

 in the cab or 'bus. As he was the only horse who could 

 jump into the field where they killed at the end of that 

 blazing fifty-five minutes, and the only horse who trotted 

 into the town on his way home, so will he on three legs 

 whirl the Hansom containing a tipsy snob and his com- 

 panion faster up from Cremorne than his fellows ; so 



