will do it. It is pleasant and good to see the same trees year after
year; the same birds coming back in spring to the same shrubs; the
same banks covered with the same flowers, and broken (if they be
stiff ones) by the same gaps. Pleasant and good it is to ride the
same horse, to sit in the same chair, to wear the same old coat.
That man who offered twenty pounds' reward for a lost carpet-bag full
of old boots was a sage, and I wish I knew him. Why should one
change one's place, any more than one's wife or one's children? Is a
hermit-crab, slipping his tail out of one strange shell into another,
in the hopes of its fitting him a little better, either a dignified,
safe, or graceful animal? No; George Riddler was a true philosopher.


'Let vules go sarching vur and nigh,
We bides at Whum, my dog and I;'


and become there, not only wiser, but more charitable; for the
oftener one sees, the better one knows; and the better one knows, the
more one loves.

It is an easy philosophy; especially in the case of the horse, where
a man cannot afford more than one, as I cannot. To own a stud of
horses, after all, is not to own horses at all, but riding-machines.
Your rich man who rides Crimaea in the morning, Sir Guy in the
afternoon, and Sultan to-morrow, and something else the next day, may
be a very gallant rider: but it is a question whether he enjoys the
pleasure which one horse gives to the poor man who rides him day
after day; one horse, who is not a slave, but a friend; who has
learnt all his tricks of voice, hand, heel, and knows what his master