ON SHOEING HORSES. 
559 
shall go without intermission, and “ without becoming gradual^ 
lame, which (as he said) they certainly do in most cases from ordi¬ 
nary shoeing.” Stop reading, boy :—Why ] What is the matter, 
Larrey ? I will be after telling you that. It is necessary we should 
have a little bit of consultation. I just caught sight of a book of 
master’s the other day, some Saint-Bel, by the powers, I believe it 
was :—there is a frontispiece of a groom holding a horse, and one of 
us holding up the foot; there stands one of our masters, I suppose, 
by the topped boots; but there is a rum ’un behind, with a mask in 
his hand. Well, I took him for Punch, Comus, or some other 
funny chap; but they told me it was intended for Ignorance. So 
thinking the artist meant us, I up with my foot and gave him a 
kick, Irishman like, forgetting that he was not present, that others 
were, and the mask might fit them. What! fit a horse, Larrey ? not 
a bit, boy; but sure enough now, didn’t the horse belong to one of 
the public you were reading about just now! so I would be after 
putting the springs in the heels, and tell them nothing at all about 
it; let them find it out. But how will you do it without a grant I 
Grant of money is it you mean, now ] why, that’s just it. You are 
doorman, I am a fireman, and times are not as they used to be with 
us: the railroad mania increased the number of firemen, who were 
afterwards thrown out of work. Notwithstanding provisions were 
cheap last winter, many were very badly off; some got an odd job 
now and then, more out of charity than from being wanted ; it may 
be the case again this winter. Now, this addition of springs to 
the heels of the shoes will give us more work, unless you and 
masters prevent it, by personating that chap with the mask in his 
hand. But if you do, I have one small bit of consolation left,—you 
will not be able to entirely prevent it, for if you do not have the 
shoes made, they will be cast after the late Mr. Goodwin’s inven¬ 
tion. I heard they were already in the founder’s hands; the iron 
trade is much altered since 1825, and if cast shoes were not then 
commercially profitable (and which only sent them out of use), they 
may be so now (no one could deny the practical utility of cast 
shoes), and to which we shall still have to make and attach the 
springs now in use by some. 
But, masters might as well give some of these poor firemen work 
for making spring shoes for next season, instead of their sending 
ten miles from town for ordinary ones. 
You are right, Larrey: times were, when such a fireman as you 
could have obtained two guineas a-week in any shop in or about 
town; but so many went about, like the lamp man in Aladdin, 
crying new shoes for old, that the old shoe was lost, and the luck 
too. Notwithstanding what the learned gentleman says to the 
contrary, in his notes on horse-shoeing in the “ United Service 
