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Teaching his Pupils How to Handle the Reins. Photo by V. Gribayédoff.

Two of M. Pernette's pupils are holding reins which are firmly anchored to the stable wall. No chance of a runaway here.

Source:
Outing magazine, vol. XLIII no. 3, December, 1903, p. 250.

Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 11

The Paris Cabman / 10

He is blue-mouldy with misanthropy, Pierre-Marie. Others do not think so ill of the business. And if one is young, fearless of rhumatisses, out of love and in tobacco, what more could he ask than the job of driving to and fro in Paris-town, here and there, yon and thither, amid a welter of midnight lights, in the good gray of the morning, in the yellow of the afternoon, or – best of all – out along the river in the vast silence of the night. The cocher's life has its compensations. His familiar cur-dog on the seat beside him, his snuff-box newly filled, his stomach at ease, a profitable bourgeois in his sapin, an easy course* for thirty sous with a pourboire* on the top of it – why should he not be content? Other men's troubles are nothing to him. His wife's temper may be none of the best, but as his home is on the box of his cab from six in the morning of today until two of the coming morning, he can take that lightly.

Like all men who have anything to do with horses, cochers are chummy folk. Stop at any one of the thousand and one "Rendezvous des Cochers" which are scattered over Paris, near the cab-ranks, you will hear good talk of its kind, horsey talk and profitable, interspersed with negligible discussion of politics. It was thus I learned that the "Three Companies" have begun to take an interest in horseflesh. The cabbies are rewarded for not abusing* their horses. High in heaven the good Saint Fiacre should beam with satisfaction. For a dozen years now Cocotte has had her chance in the Concours hippique, the Annual Horse Show, and the prize giving has done much to improve the cab horse breed and better the treatment of the canasson.