There are human beings whom to manage into doing the simplest and most obvious duty, needs, on your part, the tact of a diplomatist combined with the skill of a driver of refractory pigs.  In short, there are in human beings all kinds of mental twists and deformities.  There are mental lameness and broken-windedness.  Mental and moral shying is extremely common.  As for biting, who does not know it?  We have all seen human biters; not merely backbiters, but creatures who like to leave the marks of their teeth upon people present too.  There are many kickers; men who in running with others do (so to speak) kick over the traces, and viciously lash out at their companions with little or no provocation.  There are men who are always getting into quarrels, though in the main warm-hearted and well-meaning.  There are human jibbers:  creatures that lie down in the shafts instead of manfully (or horsefully) putting their neck to the collar, and going stoutly at the work of life.  There are multitudes of people who are constantly suffering from depression of spirits, a malady which appears in countless forms.  There is not a human being in whose mental constitution there is not something wrong; some weakness, some perversion, some positive vice.  And if you want further proof of the truth of what I am saying, given by one whose testimony is worth much more than mine, go and read that eloquent and kindly and painfully fascinating book lately published by Dr. Forbes Winslow, on Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind; and you will leave off with the firmest conviction that every breathing mortal is mentally a screw.

And yet, my reader, if you have some knowledge of horse-flesh, and if you have been accustomed in your progress through life (in the words of Dr. Johnson) to practise observation, and to look about you with extensive view, your survey must have convinced you that great part of the coaching and other horse work of this country is done, and fairly done, by screws.  These poor creatures are out in all kinds of weather, and it seems to do them little harm.  Any one who knows how snug, dry, and warm a gentleman’s horses are kept, and how often with all that they are unfit for their duty, will wonder to see poor cab horses shivering on the stand hour after hour on a winter day, and will feel something of respect mingle with his pity for the thin, patient, serviceable screws.  Horses that are lame, broken-winded, and vicious, pull the great bulk of all the weight that horses pull.  And they get through their work somehow.  Not long since, sitling on the box of a highland coach of most extraordinary shape, I travelled through Glenorchy and along Loch Awe side.  The horses were wretched to look at, yet they took the coach at a good pace over that very up and down road, which was divided into very long stages.  At last, amid a thick wood of dwarf oaks, the coach stopped to receive its final team.  It was an extraordinary place for a coach to change horses.  There was