X PREFACE. 



leads will furnish one's necessities and offer adequate accom- 

 modation and shelter for one's person. 



I venture to make one or two remarks upon driving, 

 although in this volume I do not propose to enter into 

 matters relating to the art of driving — that is, in an instructive 

 sense. 



In the course of a walk in any crowded thoroughfare in 

 the fashionable part of London, it will be observed that out 

 of fifty or more professional drivers that pass you by, there 

 are not more than a dozen that know how to drive 

 properly. In making this observation, I refer especially to 

 coachmen in livery. I believe that a great many masters and 

 mistresses are imposed upon ; provided the man's character 

 is good, and that he says he can drive, the new master or 

 mistress appears perfectly satisfied. Whether he can drive or 

 no, is a matter upon which they are frequently not qualified 

 to express an opinion ; provided that in the course of their 

 drive they do not come into collision with anything, but return 

 home safe and uninjured, they are perfectly contented. It 

 matters not to them that their horses wear a gag bearing-rein, 

 which is inflicting upon them severe suffering ; that the 

 cruppers are too tight; that the reins are buckled to the 

 lower bar of a severe bitj when the horses would go better 

 were they on the cheek; that the pole-chains are badly 

 adjusted, and that their coachman looks more as though he 

 were fly-fishing than simply driving a pair of quiet, tractable, 

 and inoffensive horses. 



Most of the coachmen in livery appear as though they 

 wanted an extra hand, three instead of two — one for the 

 whip, two for the reins — since when they whip their horses, it 

 is with both hands still clinging to the reins, and not with the 

 left hand holding the reins, and the right hand occupied with 

 the whip. I have never understood yet, what makes them 

 stick their elbows out at right angles from their sides, why 

 their reins are divided wide apart, and when they pull their 

 horses up, why they raise their hands to their chins, or even 

 higher, all the while leaning back as though they were 



