Buying a Horse | Page 2

the qualities
commended by the professor, but they had many others which the
dealers praised. These persons were not discouraged when he refused to
buy, but cheerfully returned the next day with others differently ruinous.
They were men of a spirit more obliging than my friend has found in
other walks. One of them, who paid him a prefatory visit in his library,
in five minutes augmented from six to seven hundred and fifty pounds
the weight of a pony-horse, which he wished to sell. ("What you want,"
said the Chevaliers, "is a pony-horse," and my friend, gratefully
catching at the phrase, had gone about saying he wanted a pony-horse.
After that, hulking brutes of from eleven to thirteen hundred pounds
were every day brought to him as pony-horses.) The same dealer came
another day with a mustang, in whom was no fault, and who had every
appearance of speed, but who was only marking time as it is called in
military drill, I believe, when he seemed to be getting swiftly over the
ground; he showed a sociable preference for the curbstone in turning
corners, and was condemned, to be replaced the next evening by a
pony-horse that a child might ride or drive, and that especially would
not shy. Upon experiment, he shied half across the road, and the fact
was reported to the dealer. He smiled compassionately. "What did he
shy at?"
"A wheelbarrow."
"Well! I never see the hoss yet that wouldn't shy at a wheelbarrow."
My friend owned that a wheelbarrow was of an alarming presence, but

he had his reserves respecting the self-control and intelligence of this
pony-horse. The dealer amiably withdrew him, and said that he would
bring next day a horse--if he could get the owner to part with a family
pet--that would suit; but upon investigation it appeared that this treasure
was what is called a calico-horse, and my friend, who was without the
ambition to figure in the popular eye as a stray circus-rider, declined to
see him.
These adventurous spirits were not squeamish. They thrust their hands
into the lathery mouths of their brutes to show the state of their teeth,
and wiped their fingers on their trousers or grass afterwards, without a
tremor, though my friend could never forbear a shudder at the sight. If
sometimes they came with a desirable animal, the price was far beyond
his modest figure; but generally they seemed to think that he did not
want a desirable animal. In most cases, the pony-horse pronounced
sentence upon himself by some gross and ridiculous blemish; but
sometimes my friend failed to hit upon any tenable excuse for refusing
him. In such an event, he would say, with an air of easy and candid
comradery, "Well, now, what's the matter with him?" And then the
dealer, passing his hand down one of the pony-horse's fore-legs, would
respond, with an upward glance of searching inquiry at my friend,
"Well, he's a leetle mite tender for'a'd."
I am afraid my friend grew to have a cruel pleasure in forcing them to
this exposure of the truth; but he excused himself upon the ground that
they never expected him to be alarmed at this tenderness forward, and
that their truth was not a tribute to virtue, but was contempt of his
ignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth; and he felt that it must be his part
thereafter to confute the common belief that there is no truth in
horse-trades.
These people were not usually the owners of the horses they brought,
but the emissaries or agents of the owners. Often they came merely to
show a horse, and were not at all sure that his owner would part with
him on any terms, as he was a favorite with the ladies of the family. An
impenetrable mystery hung about the owner, through which he
sometimes dimly loomed as a gentleman in failing health, who had to

give up his daily drives, and had no use for the horse. There were cases
in which the dealer came secretly, from pure zeal, to show a horse
whose owner supposed him still in the stable, and who must be taken
back before his absence was noticed. If my friend insisted upon
knowing the owner and conferring with him, in any of these instances,
it was darkly admitted that he was a gentleman in the livery business
over in Somerville or down in the Lower Port. Truth, it seemed, might
be absent or present in a horse-trade, but mystery was essential.
The dealers had a jargon of their own, in which my friend became an
expert. They did not say that a horse weighed a thousand pounds, but
ten hundred; he was not worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars, but
one and a quarter; he