IN SEARCH OP A HORSE. 47 



to-day, and selling it clipped for fifty to-morrow; 

 starving a poor famished wretch without water for 

 a week, that it might drink itself into a dropsy, so 

 as to " show a good barrel" at the next sale-day; or, 

 as you have already seen, subduing by protracted 

 torment, into deceitful quiet, a horse so vicious as to 

 endanger the life of his rider -and all around him. 

 Their minor villanies are so numerous as to make 

 description of them impossible ; and in these, aided 

 by their grooms, some self-called " gentlemen" do 

 not disdain to share. I have known men not 

 ashamed to boast of their ingenuity in tricks very 

 nearly allied to swindling — cauterizing the teeth to 

 conceal age, surfeiting a horse with unwholesome 

 food, staining a blemished knee, or clipping a horse 

 just condemned at the college, to prevent recogni- 

 tion. These, and many such rascally devices, I 

 have heard confessed with vanity by young puppies 

 who deserved to have their gentility unrobed at the 

 cart's tail; yet the confession has been received 

 with envious applause by scamps of the same order, 

 who wanted the address, but not the will, to show 

 their knavery to similar advantage. 



Horse auctions or commission stables are only one 



