A SOMEWHAT EXPENSIVE LESSON. 95 



gates to fall back against the wall, and fasten 

 across from it to the stall-post at night. They 

 are a small expense and no inconvenience in any 

 jproperly proportioned stable ; and in one whose 

 jsix stalls contain, perhaps, a thousand guineas, 

 jthey are a safeguard that it is reprehensible to 

 jomit. For, though a properly -made head- collar 

 jcannot be slipped off, in case of fright or a horse 

 getting cast, some part of it may be broken, or 

 if the safety-shank collar rings I have mentioned 

 are used, the horse will disengage himself and 

 get loose ; and a broken leg from the other 

 horses in such a case is too serious a matter to be 

 risked. 



As some proofs of the obstinacy (for I can 

 scarcely call it by a milder term to be an appro- 

 priate one) of some persons as to horses, and, fur- 

 ther, that the cautions I recommend are not quite 

 futile, a friend of mine, a good judge of horse 

 matters too, had two stallions that stood in his 

 hunting-stable, with no other safeguard than had 

 the other horses, namely, proper head-collars on 

 them. I told him tliat some night he would have 

 an accident. He laughed at my croaking, as he 

 termed it. But singular enough, in a night or 

 two, one of them did get loose, and worried a 

 valuable horse, so as to lay him up for the season, 

 and disfigured him for life. Any one would have 

 thought this lesson would have sufficed, but it 



