STABLE OPERATIONS. 75 



moment ; always ready, indeed, an hour before he is wanted. 

 He should have a religious regard to cleanliness. It should 

 be his pride to excel others, and to have everything in the 

 most exact order. Nothing looks worse than a slovenly, ill- 

 appointed coachman. He should have none of the indecent 

 slang so common among worthless stablemen. 



It is not easy to procure men with all these qualifications ; 

 and it very often happens that a man who has most of them, 

 or possibly the whole of them, and some others to boot, has 

 some fault which greatly counterbalances, or neutralizes his 

 good properties. A sood servant is very apt to take it into his 

 head that there is nobody like him. He begins to give him- 

 self airs, as if he were an indispensable personage, whose 

 loss could not be supplied. He will sometimes forget him- 

 self so far as to do things which he knows would procure the 

 discharge of any other servant. The longer a man of this 

 kind is suffered, the worse he grows. He encroaches here 

 and there, till he has privileges sufficient to excite rebellion 

 in all the rest of the household. At last he becomes quite a 

 fool, and there is no longer any managing of him, and he has 

 to be sent about his business. A man who ventures to do 

 wrong, or to forget his duty, merely because he knows that 

 he is highly esteemed, must have little foresight. It is the 

 very way to forfeit all he has gained, and estimation of this 

 kind once lost, is always lost. It is a greater evil to lose a 

 good name, than never to obtain it. 



In the country coachman skilful driving is not of the first 

 importance. He need not, like his brother of the town, serve 

 an apprenticeship for it. He may go from the stable or the 

 plough, and a few lessons on a quiet road, with a pair of 

 steady horses, will soon give him all the proficiency he re- 

 quires. The more of the other qualities he possesses, the 

 better. The principal fault of a country coachman is sloven- 

 liness. He sits on the box as if he were driving a cart, his 

 hands resting on his knees, elbows projecting like the paddles 

 of a steamboat, his body bent nearly double, his head hang- 

 ing low, or his eyes following everything but the horses ; the 

 reins slack, whip pointing to the ground, its handle spliced, 

 and thong curtailed. Then the horses are something like the 

 man ; their coats are long, rough, dim, and their actions sluggish. 

 The harness and the carriage are not much better, looking rusty, 

 tarnished, sun-burned. The stable is always in disorder, 

 presenting an assemblage of things useless and useful, frag- 

 ments of this and of that, nothing where it should be, and 



