214 PROFESSIONAL HARDSHIPS. 



What then was the solution ? Simply this : The owner 

 unfortunately had listened to his friends, instead of, as 

 previously, hearing what his trainer has had to say. It 

 cannot be doubted for an instant, that the trainer studies 

 his own interest in studying the interest and pleasure of 

 his employer ; and that to think or to wish to do otherwise 

 would be madness. There is a greater desire to serve an 

 old client, and more pleasure in doing so than to serve half- 

 a-dozen new ones, whose good qualities are taken on sup- 

 position, for they may be impostors. But amongst old clients 

 many are known to the trainer as valuable patrons and good 

 men. This one may be peevish, but he is genuine ; the 

 other has his crotchets, but he is liberality itself. 



Sometimes the origin of the change is amusing. The late 

 Mr. Hilton, an eccentric gentleman, told me that he removed 

 his horses from the late Mr. Harlock, because one of them 

 was choked with a carrot in the night, and found dead in 

 the morning ; adding " his trainer should have prevented it. " 



Mr. took his horses away from Danebury because he 



backed Lady Elizabeth to win the Derby and she did not. 

 A very worthy old friend and most estimable man, a client 

 of mine, without the least wish to create unpleasantness or 

 be thought officious, thinks no horse's feet can be properly 

 attended to that he has not seen cut out and the shoes put 

 on : otherwise his heels are too high, his toes too long, soles 

 too bare, his feet want paring down ; or it is the reverse of 

 all this with his shoes — they are always too thick or too 

 thin, too long or too short, and have too few or too many 

 nails, and the largest number generally placed on the wrong 

 side, or drawn on too tight or insecurely fixed. And yet 

 I think I have had as few lame horses as any one elsewhere, 

 notwithstanding all this terrible catalogue of existing wrongs 



