There are not many men who can do that, but there is plenty of sport to be had in driving four horses, this side of that supreme ability. Men who lack the time, money, knowledge, and experience to put a coach on the road may still, with benefit to themselves, and to the inmates of their stables, drive four horses. Although there was coaching in a sense in this country, from Revolutionary times and before (see Chapter III.), the first regular English coach sent to this country to be used for pleasure driving was imported in 1860 by Mr. Lawrence of Boston. The first public coach was put on the road in 1876 by Colonel Delancey Kane, and ran from the Brunswick Hotel, New York, to Pelham.
Monotony probably destroys more people than any one form of dissipation. Humanity wearies of the round of duties day after day, and attempts by drink, or dissipation, or by running away from duty, to break in upon it or to break away from it. It takes the very highest qualities to stick it out, whatever may be the duty. Plato maintained that change is rest. Many men work all the time; their only rest is change of work. He is a diplomat in life who remembers this dangerous quality of monotony, and in his own life, and the life about him, seeks to diversify it.
This principle can be applied to the subject of driving as well, if not better, than to most others. To drive one horse, over one road, day in and day out, becomes a weariness to the flesh, instead of a refreshment. If you have only one horse, you can at least both ride him and drive him. If you have two, you can drive them abreast as a pair, or one in front of the other as a tandem, and both can be ridden. As soon as your stable enlarges to four, you can have no end of variety if care and patience are exercised. Strange to say, too, the horses join in the fun. A horse likes a new road and enjoys going in a new way. It will take time and trouble to teach your horses to go tandem, and in a four; but once they are taught, they enjoy it quite as much as you do. Of course we are writing now of those who wish to get practice and pleasure out of their stables, not merely for those who use their horses for purposes of transportation only. Do not start out with the notion that the only way to drive a tandem, or a four, is to have exactly the proper vehicle, the right harness to the shape of a buckle, and horses of just such and such a character. The show ring is one thing; driving for sport and pleasure is quite another.
Practically any man who will spend enough money can win prizes in the show ring; and it is only occasionally nowadays, when so much money is spent for show-ring horses and equipages, that a man of moderate means can hope to win in these tournaments. He may by good judgment, in buying and training, bring out a winner now and then; but he has little chance against those who are willing to pay any price for a ready-made winner.
PLATE XXXI.
It is a good thing to know how horses and vehicle should be turned out, even down to minute details; but a book, a coach-builder, a harnessmaker and a bank-account never yet made a sportsman, at this, or any other game. As has been said before in another chapter, "form" is only rational when it is the proper clothing of an idea; it is ridiculous and unworthy when it is merely an idea of proper clothing.
Of tandem driving we have written in another chapter. If you cannot have a four, costing, with coach, horses, and harness, $15,000 or more, why not have just as much sport, and far more valuable experience, by a more economical arrangement? Buy your horses with a purpose, to begin with. Let the saddle-horses serve as leaders, the blockier, heavier harness horses in the wheel. Or if you run to smaller sizes, two of 15.1 in the wheel and your polo ponies 14.2 in the lead, with a pony break behind them, make a capital four. If a second-hand harness is not procurable, terrets on your wheelers' saddles and bridles make any stout double harness serviceable; and an extra pair of long reins and long traces fit out your leaders, and there you are. Any man who can afford to keep four horses can, if he will give the problem time and trouble, have the practice of driving four.