Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse by Anna Sewell

Author:Anna Sewell
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Great Britain -- History -- 19th century -- Juvenile fiction, Horses -- Juvenile fiction, Historical fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019-11-27T22:22:34+00:00

XXVIII

A Job Horse and His Driv­ers

Hith­er­to I had al­ways been driv­en by peo­ple who at least knew how to drive; but in this place I was to get my ex­pe­ri­ence of all the dif­fer­ent kinds of bad and ig­no­rant driv­ing to which we hors­es are sub­ject­ed; for I was a “job horse,” and was let out to all sorts of peo­ple who wished to hire me; and as I was good-tem­pered and gen­tle, I think I was of­ten­er let out to the ig­no­rant driv­ers than some of the oth­er hors­es, be­cause I could be de­pend­ed up­on. It would take a long time to tell of all the dif­fer­ent styles in which I was driv­en, but I will men­tion a few of them.

First, there were the tight-rein driv­ers—men who seemed to think that all de­pend­ed on hold­ing the reins as hard as they could, nev­er re­lax­ing the pull on the horse’s mouth, or giv­ing him the least lib­er­ty of move­ment. They are al­ways talk­ing about “keep­ing the horse well in hand,” and “hold­ing a horse up,” just as if a horse was not made to hold him­self up.

Some poor, bro­ken-down hors­es, whose mouths have been made hard and in­sen­si­ble by just such driv­ers as these, may, per­haps, find some sup­port in it; but for a horse who can de­pend up­on his own legs, and who has a ten­der mouth and is eas­i­ly guid­ed, it is not on­ly tor­ment­ing, but it is stupid.

Then there are the loose-rein driv­ers, who let the reins lie eas­i­ly on our backs, and their own hand rest lazi­ly on their knees. Of course, such gen­tle­men have no con­trol over a horse, if any­thing hap­pens sud­den­ly. If a horse shies, or starts, or stum­bles, they are nowhere, and can­not help the horse or them­selves till the mis­chief is done. Of course, for my­self I had no ob­jec­tion to it, as I was not in the habit ei­ther of start­ing or stum­bling, and had on­ly been used to de­pend on my driv­er for guid­ance and en­cour­age­ment. Still, one likes to feel the rein a lit­tle in go­ing down­hill, and likes to know that one’s driv­er is not gone to sleep.

Be­sides, a sloven­ly way of driv­ing gets a horse in­to bad and of­ten lazy habits, and when he changes hands he has to be whipped out of them with more or less pain and trou­ble. Squire Gor­don al­ways kept us to our best paces and our best man­ners. He said that spoil­ing a horse and let­ting him get in­to bad habits was just as cru­el as spoil­ing a child, and both had to suf­fer for it af­ter­ward.

Be­sides, these driv­ers are of­ten care­less al­to­geth­er, and will at­tend to any­thing else more than their hors­es. I went out in the phaeton one day with one of them; he had a la­dy and two chil­dren be­hind. He flopped the reins about as we start­ed, and of course gave me sev­er­al un­mean­ing cuts with the whip, though I was fair­ly off. There had

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