MELTING DOWN. 277 



may try it, and should it succeed, I shall have done 

 as much in my way by the suggestion to save time as 

 Brunei or Stephenson by steam. For here we buy a 

 horse long in his coat perhaps, certainly fat as a bul- 

 lock : but the time of getting into condition will only 

 be according to the meltmian not Meltonian plan, as 

 follows : viz., to melting twelve hours, clipping ditto ; 

 so in twenty-four hours we have a horse in hunting 

 condition. What a bungler I must be ! I never got 

 a fat horse from a dealer's stable into condition under 

 half as many weeks. I do not mean to say Mr. A. 

 has been quite so quick in his operations ; but I will 

 answer for him he has brought his horse to a most 

 comfortable state of inward debility, and, in point of 

 outward appearance, no bad representative of a Malay- 

 cock stripped of his feather. Des belles plumes font 

 des beaux oiseaux : so we are told, and a great many 

 plumes give the appearance of a plump oiseau : so a 

 great deal of fat on a horse often stands good in some 

 people's eyes for very little muscle. Take away that 

 fat, we then find we have got the long Malay-looking 

 gawk of a beast I have similarised : but, worse than 

 this, getting fat off by work when the frame is not 

 hard enough to bear it reduces muscle also. So, 

 deficient as the horse ever was we will suppose in that 

 particular, he has been made ten times worse than he 

 would have been by injudicious treatment. There 

 he stands, wasted; what little flesh he has on him 

 soft as hasty-pudding; spiritless from constitutional 

 weakness, and with, in stable language, his belly up 

 to his back-bone : for though a horse blown out with 

 mashes and warm water, and his ribs well covered 

 with fat, may look in good proportion, it may be 

 found, when stripped of this fat, that his ribs run 



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