To many people the stable operations may appear to be few and simple, requiring little dexterity and almost no experience. A great many horses do not demand much care; their work is easy, and their personal appearance is not a matter of much consequence. They are horses of small price, and they are attended by men whose services would not be accepted where the value, and work, and appearance of the horse, demand more skilful management. In hunting and in racing studs, the stable operations are more numerous, and performed in a different manner. There, nobody can groom a horse but a groom; one who has learned his business as a man learns a trade.

It is impossible to have the stable operations performed well, nor even decently, without good tools, and good hands to use them. There should be no want of the necessary implements. A bad groom may do without many of them, because he does not know their use; but a good groom requires brushes, combs, sponges, towels, skins, rubbers, scissors, bandages, cloths, pails, forks, brooms, and some other little articles, all which he should have, if the horse is to receive all the care and decoration a groom can bestow.

The stable operations are learned by imitation and by practice. But there is no one to teach, and no one desirous of learning them in a systematic manner. A boy, intending to become a groom, goes into the stable of a person not very particular about his horses, or he goes sometimes under a senior. At first the boy can do almost nothing. After a while he is able to do some things, perhaps, tolerably well. He can go about the horse, and manage some of the stable operations better than he could at the beginning. In a few years he may be an excellent groom. But, is it not singular 1 he has never in all that time made any effort to learn his business. He has had work to do, and it was done, not because he desired to learn how to do it, but because it could not be left undone. The horse was to clean, and when cleaned, the boy was thankful that his task was finished, and he never did it when he could avoid it. If he had been anxious to learn his business quickly and well, he ought to have done a great deal more. Instead of contriving expedients to escape work, he ought to have done the work ten times for once.

He never brushed a horse when he did not need brushing, nor made a bed twice when once would serve.

If the boy has any desire to learn, or if any desire can be excited, let him see the stable and the stable-work of a good groom. Show him the horse's skin, how beautiful and pure it is; the stable, how clean and orderly, and the bed, how neatly and comfortably it is made. Let him see the man at work, and make him understand that his dexterity was acquired by practice. For the operations, after seeing them once or twice performed, practice is, everything. Two dressings every day may be all the horse requires, but four will do him no harm. The bed may be made twenty times a-day; and everything which practice teaches should be done often, if it is ever to be done well. In the ordinary course of things the boy may become an expert groom in four or five years. By systematic and persevering efforts, he may be as expert in six or eight months. There are many businesses, and a groom's is one of them, in which it is difficult to get skilful workmen. There are loiterers of all kinds in the world; and every large town furnishes thousands of men who have arrived at old age in the pursuit or practice of a business which they never made a serious effort to learn. There are few who have studied to learn or to improve.

Everything is left to chance; and if much were not acquired by chance, a good workman, among working men, would be a wonder. Even among professional men, there is more anxiety to appear skilful than diligence to be so.