Note 1 — PREFACE.

It may be well to let my readers know how I became experienced on the road. In the days when coaching was in its perfection (and when many country gentlemen indulged in their fancy for the use of the “ribbons”), I became, during a long interval from service, deeply and actively concerned in a coaching establishment of the first order; and those who, some years since, travelling between Dublin and Killarney via Limerick (a distance of about 185 miles), may have happened to hear coachmen and helpers talking of the “Captain,” will recognise in the writer the individual thus referred to, who was also in partnership with the famous Bianconi in the staging on the Killarney line. Several years spent in such a school will probably be considered a good apprenticeship to the study of one branch of the subject herein treated upon—viz., the management of horses on the road.