110 BITS AND BITTING. 



in fact, this sort of language becomes the means of 

 keeping secret certain processes for the benefit of the 

 initiated, and to the exclusion of the general public. 



There can be, perhaps, no very serious objection to 

 this in general, the great desideratum being that the 

 workman should know how to do his work properly, not 

 suffering himself to be misled by the kind of mystical 

 jargon applied to it ; but there are cases in which it 

 does an infinity of mischief, and tends to the propaga- 

 tion of serious errors. To give a practical illustration : 

 of the thousands that ride and drive horses in this 

 country, but very few have acquired the art otherwise 

 than by self-teaching what is called practice ; and of 

 the nearly equally great number who are intrusted with 

 the care and management of these animals, precisely 

 the same may be said. What shall we say of the 

 somewhat numerous class of individuals that undertake 

 to " break in" horses, as it is called, except that they 

 distinguish themselves generally by an abundance of 

 courage and determination very necessary qualifica- 

 tions they are, too and an equally great lack of any- 

 thing like rational principle to guide them in the exercise 

 of what they have converted into a handicraft. There 

 is a fourth class, not numerous indeed, but very im- 

 portant in their way : those artisans who spend all their 

 lives in the forge or workshop have seldom, if ever, any, 

 even the slightest, knowledge of horses, and still are 

 intrusted with the fabrication of those instruments, too 

 frequently of torture, which we apply to almost the 

 most sensitive part of the animal's body, his mouth. 



Now there is scarcely any one expression so common 

 amongst riders, drivers, grooms, and horse-breakers, as 

 that a horse's mouth is hard or soft ; and when one 



