they saw you in trouble, than to help you. So take care of your horse,
and feed him every day with your own hands; give him three-quarters of a
peck of corn each day, mixed up with a little hay-chaff, and allow him
besides one hundredweight of hay in the course of a week; some say that
the hay should be hardland hay, because it is wholesomest, but I say, let
it be clover hay, because the horse likes it best; give him through
summer and winter, once a week, a pailful of bran mash, cold in summer
and in winter hot; ride him gently about the neighbourhood every day, by
which means you will give exercise to yourself and horse, and, moreover,
have the satisfaction of exhibiting yourself and your horse to advantage,
and hearing, perhaps, the men say what a fine horse, and the ladies
saying what a fine man: never let your groom mount your horse, as it is
ten to one, if you do, your groom will be wishing to show off before
company, and will fling your horse down. I was groom to a gemman before
I went to the inn at Hounslow, and flung him a horse down worth ninety
guineas, by endeavouring to show off before some ladies that I met on the
road. Turn your horse out to grass throughout May and the first part of
June, for then the grass is sweetest, and the flies don't sting so bad as
they do later in summer; afterwards merely turn him out occasionally in
the swale of the morn and the evening; after September the grass is good
for little, lash and sour at best; every horse should go out to grass, if
not his blood becomes full of greasy humours, and his wind is apt to
become affected, but he ought to be kept as much as possible from the
heat and flies, always got up at night, and never turned out late in the
year--Lord! if I had always such a nice attentive person to listen to me
as you are, I could go on talking about 'orses to the end of time.'

* * * * *

I was bidding him farewell, when he hemmed once or twice, and said, that