You can tell a portrait from an ideal head, I
suppose, and a true story from one spun out of the writer's invention.
See whether this sounds true or not.
Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and
Scrab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking
of. With them came a Yorkshire groom, a stocky little fellow, in velvet
breeches, who made that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in
English stables, when he rubbed down the silken-skinned racers, in great
perfection. After the soldiers had come from the muster-field, and
some of the companies were on the village-common, there was still some
skirmishing between a few individuals who had not had the fight taken
out of them. The little Yorkshire groom thought he must serve out
somebody. So he threw himself into an approved scientific attitude, and,
in brief, emphatic language, expressed his urgent anxiety to accommodate
any classical young gentleman who chose to consider himself a candidate
for his attentions. I don't suppose there were many of the college boys
that would have been a match for him in the art which Englishmen know
so much more of than Americans, for the most part.
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