Part 9 (1/2)

If you should stop, with a tired horse, at the door of the ”King's Head”

anywhere, and should say to the bowing landlord thereof, that, unless you can find some other means of pursuing your journey, you shall be obliged to have a chaise immediately, you must not expect to be told by him that a very good coach, which is going your way, will change horses at the ”Red Lion,” nearly opposite, in less than ten minutes. Should this be the real state of the case, he will feel that he has no time to lose; and therefore, instantly seizing the handle of the hostler's bell, and ringing a louder peal than usual, he will at once show you into a back parlour, for fear that you should see the coach before a chaise can be got ready for you.

XIX.

Should it have been your fate to travel often, _more majorum_, on the box of a stage-coach, more than one coachman has probably told you a story, two miles long, about some mare so vicious and unmanageable that she had been rejected by every other coachman on the road, and that n.o.body but himself had ever been able to drive her, saying at the same time, ”She is now, as you see, Sir, as quiet as a lamb.” You must not believe all this, although it may perhaps be very true that the mare kicks sometimes, and that the man is not a bad coachman.

XX.

Although our friend the coachman is supposed to have been so very communicative to you on the last occasion, he may not perhaps be equally so on all others: for instance, if, when the roads are very bad, and the coach is heavily laden, he should, near the end of a difficult stage, pull up at some turnpike, and enter into a long talk apparently about a bad s.h.i.+lling or a lost parcel, he is very likely not to explain to you and the other pa.s.sengers that his real reason for thus stopping is because his horses are so much distressed that they would otherwise be scarcely able to reach the end of their ground. The conference at the gate is held in order to facilitate the ratification of the treaty for fresh horses to be exchanged in the next town.

XXI.

On arriving at the place where ”the coach dines,” walk to the nearest baker's shop, and there satisfy your hunger in a wholesome manner. At the dinner which is prepared for the pa.s.sengers it frequently happens that if there should have been any c.o.c.k-fighting in the town lately,[I]

the winner and the loser of the last battle appear at the top of the table as a couple of boiled fowls; and whenever there is a roast goose at the bottom, it is probably some old gander, who, after having lived for many years in the parish, is at last become so poor that he is obliged to be ”taken into the house.”

XXII.

If you have children, who are clever, do not question them too closely in company. Supposing, for example, that at the close of a social meal in the country, you should be sitting at table with your guests, on the eve of their departure from your hospitable roof: if, under these circ.u.mstances, some nice little fellow, who has lately rushed into the room, and is now busily employed with a bunch of grapes, should be called upon by you to join in the general expression of regret that your friends are to leave you to-morrow, he may perhaps say, ”Yes, papa, we shall have no grapes after dinner to-morrow.”

XXIII.

If you are thought to excel in any particular game or sport, do not too often lead to it as a subject of conversation: your superiority, if real, will be duly felt by all your acquaintance, and acknowledged by some of them; and you may be sure that ”a word” in your favour from another person will add more to your reputation than ”a whole history”

from yourself.

XXIV.

On seeing a new invention for the first time, do not instantly suggest a material alteration of it, as if you felt quite sure that this sudden thought of yours must be a very clever one. It may be reasonably supposed that the inventor did not hastily build up his work in its present form; and it would, therefore, be very unkind that you should bring the whole broadside of your intellectual guns to bear upon it in a moment. Besides, after all, it is just possible that the thing may be better as it is--without your improvement.

XXV.

The great merit of an important discovery frequently consists in the first application of some well-known principle of action to a cla.s.s of objects to which it had not before been applied. When such discovery has been brought before the public in one instance, the application of the same principle to other nearly similar objects requires a much lower degree of inventive talent. A sub-inventor of this sort often views the result of his labour with all the pride of a mother, when he is only ent.i.tled to the praise due to an accoucheur.

XXVI.

When your friends congratulate you on your recovery from the effects of a serious accident, it is very proper that you should thank them sincerely for their kindness in so doing: but it is by no means necessary that you should give a very detailed description of all your sufferings, and of every symptom attending the gradual progress of your recovery; nor need you explain exactly what was at first said by Mr.

Drugger, the apothecary, and what was afterwards the opinion of Sir Astley Cooper. You had better not do this; although some persons think that what the nurse occasionally said ought not, in a case like theirs, to be omitted.

XXVII.