"How long before you were well again?"
"Six days; six miles out, every day; six miles home; and in six days all those morbid secretions went away from my brain, and I became as I am, a cheerful and happy man."
"But how shall I manage? I must begin de novo. I must learn, and I must get a horse that will just move as I want him, slow and sure; either a walk, or a gentle canter; one that does not mind the whip; and I dare not ride one with a spur."
"My dear fellow, I have a friend who served me with a horse just as I wanted it; and I have no doubt he can serve you just as well. I will write him a note, and you shall take it to him yourself."
Accordingly, the Doctor wrote him one of his laconic Epistles.
"Dear Tatt.—Mount my brother Doctor; give him a stiff-one, and one that will require a little exercise of the deltoides of the right arm. He can pay. Suit him well.
Yours, faithfully,—Geoffery Gambado."
"Mr. John Tattsall."
Now the celebrated Doctor Bull had as good a pair of carriage horses as any Squire Bull in England. Tatt. certainly mounted him on one "that he could not" make the least of. He was quiet enough, stiff enough, slow enough, steady enough; he did not mind the whip, for the Doctor might cut him over the head, neck, ears, and under the flank, and anywhere, and everywhere else; but the beast had no animation. The more he punished him, he only went the surest way to show to the world, How to make the least of a horse.
A few days after his horse exercise, he called on his friend Doctor Gambado, and said, "Doctor, I am certainly better; but I believe I should have been quite as well, if I had mounted a saddler's wooden horse, and tried to make him go, as I am in trying to make your friend Tattsall's horse go. I could not have believed it possible that any beast could bear without motion such a dose of whip-cord as I have administered to him."