“As you have got a hunting horse, you will want a groom, and should try to get a nice-looking one. He should not be knocknee’d; on the contrary, bow-legged,—the sort of legs that a pig can pop through. Look an applicant over first, and if his appearance is against him. just put him off quietly by taking his name and address, and say that there are one or two before him, and that you will write to him if you are likely to require his services. “You will soon have plenty to choose from, but it is hard to say whether the tricks of the town ones, or the gaucheries of the country ones are most objectionable. The latter never put on their boots and upper things properly. A slangy, slovenly-looking fellow should be especially avoided. Also men with great shock heads of hair. If they can’t trim themselves, there will not be much chance of their trimming their horses. In short, I believe a groom—a man who really knows and cares anything about horses—is a very difficult person to get. There are plenty who can hiss and fuss, and be busy upon nothing, but very few who can both dress a horse, and dress themselves. “I know Lord Ladythorne makes it a rule never to take one who has been brought up in the racing-stable, for he says they are all hurry and gallop, and for putting two hours’ exercise into one. Whatever you do, don’t take one without a character, for however people may gloss over their late servant’s faults and imperfections, and however abject and penitent the applicants may appear, rely upon it, nature will out, and as soon as ever they get up their condition, as they call it, or are installed into their new clothes, they begin to take liberties, and ultimately relapse into their old drunken dissolute habits. It is fortunate for the world that most of them carry their characters in their faces. Besides, it isn’t fair to respectable servants to bring them in contact with these sort of profligates. “Whatever you do, don’t let him find his own clothes. There isn’t one in twenty who can be trusted to do so, and nothing looks worse than the half-livery, half-plain, wholly shabby clothes some of them adopt. “It is wonderful what things they will vote good if they have to find others themselves, things that they would declare were not fit to put on, and they couldn’t be seen in if master supplied them. The best of everything then is only good enough for them.