The Duties on Servants, Carriages, and Horses, are collected by the same Officers that collect the House and Window Taxes; and are reckoned from one fifth of April to another; and if you keep a Horse or Carriage for a Single week, you must pay the Tax thereon for a whole Year.
THE ART
OF
MANAGING COACHMEN.
The Christian precept of
“Do as you would be done by,”
is in few instances more difficult to observe, than it is towards a Coachman, who is, in fact, paid to endure those Inconveniences from which the Carriage protects his Employer. However, the Good Master will “do as he would be done by,” and make his Servant as Comfortable as the peculiar nature of his place permits.
Merciful Masters, who use their Carriage in Wet Weather[16], provide their Coachman Two Box Coats:—a Second-hand Coat may be bought for about £2. 10s.—a slight increase to their Expense, a great addition to his Comfort: for when a Box Coat gets thoroughly Wet, it will take forty-eight hours before it becomes thoroughly Dry; for it must not be dried otherwise than gradually and in the Air. Mr. Jarvis says, that “the best way of drying a Box Coat on these occasions, is to put it round a Truss of Straw.”
The Hardy habits of Coachmen enable them to brave the inclemencies of the Sky, and to set the Cold and Rain at defiance, when encompassed in their seven-fold Cape, and a comfortable Dry Coat;—but, my fair-weather friend, can you imagine a more awfully dangerous envelope than a Wet Blanket?
Whatever Olympic Wits or Whips might think, there are few modern Jockies who will agree with Pindarus, that Water is the best thing, at least for the lining of the Inner or the Outer Coat of the Stomach.
Damp Clothes are the cause of Coachmen being so often and so severely afflicted with Rheumatism; therefore we insert the following, which has frequently proved an efficacious remedy in old and inveterate attacks of this complaint.