There are several kinds of stable servants. There are coachmen grooms, hunting-grooms, training-grooms, headgrooms, head-lads, boys, strappers, ostlers, carters, and many more of smaller note. Taken altogether, they form a class which can not be easily described. Some of them are very decent men, filling their station with respectability; and often at the close of a long and useful servitude, receiving the approbation and reward which their conduct deserves. Some are humane to their horses, dutiful, careful, and vigilant; many know their business well, and are able to teach it so admirably, that I have often thought it a pity there should be no school where these men might practically instruct others.

In our books it has been too long and too much the custom to speak of stablemen as if they were all alike; as if they were all ignorant, and something worse than ignorant. Their very employment has been treated with contempt by men from whom something better might be expected. There is surely nothing degrading in tending the horse whether well or sick. To throw odium on the employment, is to deprive the horse of many men whose services might make his life more tol-able; and to degrade all, because a few deserve degradation, is work fit only for a fool. Society, composed as it is of so much pride, and folly, and ignorance, will continue to do this, and to associate the duty with the men who perform it. But in the solitude of his study a writer ought to be more precise. His wisdom is not of much worth if he mingle it with the dogmas of those to whom the distinctions of pride and pomp are more than the distinctions of truth.

It depends upon the man himself. There is no reason why he should not be respectable and respected. He fills a useful place in society. There are many in it shrewd and intelligent above their station.

But then there is much to be said on the other side. The great fault of stablemen in general is want of skill. Only a few have all the qualifications their work demands. Some are inexperienced, perfectly unacquainted with their duties; some are stupid, awkward, inexpert, incapable of learning anything; some are lazy, dirty, shuffling ragamuffins, useless as weeds, and more pernicious; some are abominably ill-tempered, cruel, and even ferocious, frequently laming the horses, overdriving, or abusing them in a variety of ways; some are dishonest, pilfering and selling the provender; some are tipplers; a great many are altogether given over to drunkenness; some are so mightily puffed up with a notion of their own wisdom and abilities, that there is no bearing with them. These are always intractable. Directions are of no use to them. They will do things their own way, without even attempting any other. They know everything, and everybody's business but their own. Others are so desperately vain of their swee persons, that for one hour they spend upon the horses, they spend two in letting people see themselves, or in preparing to be seen. Some are careless, wasteful, indifferent to their master's interests.

Others are insinuating hypocrites, mere eye-servants; never doing their duty, yet always busy; never grumbling, but often ostentatiously exhibiting some trait of superfluous obedience, deference, or care. Some are slovenly, always in disorder. Many are indifferent to the welfare and comfort of the horses. They may not be ill-tempered nor violent; but they are negligent, and that often amounts to cruelty. They never sympathize with the suffering. They will stand round a horse in the pangs of death, and, if moved at all, it is to utter some foul jest, or to bestow a curse or a kick. These fellows are rarely to be trusted as stablemen, and never as drivers. Indeed, they are unworthy of all trust. They are always heartless, selfish vagabonds, indifferent to everything but their own animal wants, and never doing any good but what the law compels. A good stableman should love horses; while they are ill he should not be quite at ease.

Some stablemen have the speaking-evil. They are never right but when they are talking with somebody. While they are gossipping the work is standing. In general these are sad boasters and tale-bearers. They must have something to prate about, and if there is nothing to be said about the master or his lady, nor any secret to be carried from the stables or the house, new stories must be laid upon the old foundation, and with fiction, and truth, and says-he and says-I, some sort of a story is trumped up to afford the talking gentleman a little merriment or consolation. In most stables this vice is of no consequence; but such a man is not to be trusted in a racing stud. These great talkers are mostly always great liars.

The Gentleman's Coachman is not the same being in the city that he appears in the country. In the crowded streets of large towns he should have nothing to learn. Skill in driving is his most essential qualification. Sobriety stands next, and after that, experience in the stable management of his horses. He should be careful at all times; cool when accidents happen; kind to his horses; active, robust, good-looking; of a mature age; not disposed to sleep on the box, nor too fond of company. He should be punctual to a 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 himself airs, as if he were an indispensable personage, whose loss could not be supplied. He will sometimes forget himself 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 requires. The more of the other qualities he possesses, the better. The principal fault of a country coachman is slovenliness. 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 hanging 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, fragments of this and of that, nothing where it should be, and nothing complete; the whole very much resembling that com pilation entitled " The Field-Book."

Slovenly servants always have very particular masters. There is almost no curing of them. Habits of order and despatch must commence in boyhood, or not at all.

The work of a coachman usually consists in taking care of the horses, harness, and carriage, and in driving. Sometimes he has also a saddle or gig horse to look after. Where three or more horses are necessary to do the work, he must have a boy or man under him.