The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-04-11 00:00:00

THE COACHMAN

It is not too much to say that, in all probability,
no class of men following any calling are, as a body,
so far removed from perfection as the average coach-
man. You may start with the horse's head, and See
at a glance that not one in ten has even a comparative
knowledge of the science of bitting. If they had, they
would not pull the bridoon up so as to wrinkle the
corners of the horse's mouth, while they leave the
curb bit more than two inches below; nor would they
so persistently drive on the bottom bar; nor would
they be so ill-judged as to use a powerful bit and tight
curb chain, which makes the horse throw up hiihead,
and then seek to cheek this defect by the application
of a standing martingale. Again, anyone with suffi-
cient curiosity to notice will often see a coachman
trying to make horses work together by taking up or
letting out the traces of one horse, entirely over-
looking the fact that, assuming the horses to be
matched in point of length and size, the
length of trace must be the same in order to enable
the horses to draw evenly. Any excessive freedom on
the part of one must be corrected by the bit and the
coupling reins, and not, as a general rule, by altering
the traces, which, except in the case of horses ridden
post, should almost invariably be of the same length.
Poling up, too, is a detail of which the average coach-
man does not know much; sometimes horses are so
confined that they can barely step out, sometimes the
chains are allowed to swing and rattle about like those
on the station 'bus. When the carriage is in motion,
we see much to object to in the use of the whip. "If
you wish to use it well, use it as little as possible,"
says a high driving authority; and this is just what
too many coachmen will not do. "Hit and hold"
them is an excellent maxim—up to a certain point;
but the hitting must not be too severe, nor the hold-
ing too tight. Nearly twenty-five years ago Lord.
Essex taught a coachman a severe lesson by summon-
ing him for cruelly whipping a horse he was
driving. The horse was young, said the man's
mistress, and required flogging. The magistrate dis-
believed in this style of horse-breaking, and sent the
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the owner of the carriage is shopping or paying calls,
and then hitting them sharply if they resent the milder
application? Bringing up horses with a jerk is
another common trick, and is the cause of many a
fall, incipient spavin, and that inexplicable lameness
that neither master nor man can account
for. Coachmen, when carted to account for excessive
use of the whip, often point out how light is their in-
strument of punishment compared with the carter's
whip, or the substantial stick of the costermonger.
The falsity of this has been well pointed out by a vety
good coachman, who remarked that "the broadest
yoke is not by any means the most severe, nor the
thickest lash the most capable of administeringpunish-
meat.— The Field.

Fuom time to time stories concerning the system
prevailing at book auctions, and known as the
"knock-out," arise to startle the public and dismay
the collector. One such story is at present current.
At a recent sale at Leamington a copy of Nichols's
"History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester,"
was, it is stated, sold for £l2 in the auction room,
and resold in the " knock-out " for £l3O. Some of
our leading booksellers are said to have been con-
cerned in this dishonourable and knavish transaction.
Comment upon this is superfluous. One thing at least
the bibliophile should learn from this—not to sell his
books in the country. A similar iniquity has occurred
in a London auction-room, but its perpetration, in
consequence of the greater congress of buyers and for
other reasons, is more difficult. We should much like
to publish a list of those who took part in this scan-
dalous transacti,