62 Among Men and Horses. 



helpful to persons who were in search of reasoned-out know- 

 ledge on horses. I wrote as a man who had not had time to 

 forget how ignorant he had been. The work was an echo of 

 my few student days, and I accordingly called it Veterinary 

 Notes for Horse Owners. The only bit of originality about 

 this first edition was the fact of its having been written by a 

 confessedly ignorant man for others who were more ignorant 

 than himself. We can judge correctly of the requirements of 

 other people, only by our own wants, or by our own lately 

 remembered wants. Had I delayed writing it until now, it 

 would not have proved the success it has been. I have made 

 it, in each succeeding edition, the repository of all the useful 

 veterinary information (as regards horses) which I have ac- 

 quired from time to time, and am certain that none of my 

 readers consult it with so much benefit as I do myself. 



I may here make a brief personal statement with reference 

 to the oft asked question : How do authors write books ? As 

 Balzac happily puts it, ideas spring up in the mind like 

 truffles in the plains of Perigord. ' They come, but cannot be 

 forced : at least, I find it so. I have only once sat down to 

 write a book, and having finished it, not at all to my satisfac- 

 tion, I took good care not to accept its paternity as the author. 

 The first hint I receive of having to write a book, is a gradu- 

 ally developed feeling that my mind, unconsciously to myself, 

 has produced a number of mental fungi (I do not venture to 

 term them truffles), which retard the growth in me of other 

 forms of brain produce. When this cerebral harvest is com- 

 plete, I find that the only way to get rid of it, is to collect it 

 together, and cook it into a literary plat, called a book, which 

 I give to the public to consume. Or I might liken it to the 

 germination, development, and birth of an accident d'amour, 

 the delivery of which relieves me from an intolerable mental 

 load. And, then, what I am pleased to call my mind, remains 

 fallow, until, perchance, again unconsciously stimulated to 

 production. So you see that I am an absolutely irresponsible 

 agent. 



