The Black Swans 



Horse trading is the big feature of 

 the fair. Somewhere, some place per- 

 haps behind the Kaiser's front lines 

 it might be possible to collect a more 

 picturesque lot of lame, blind, crippled, 

 swollen-legged crow-baits than are as- 

 sembled from heaven knows where on 

 these Blue Island market days. I 

 fancy they do not all come from the 

 farms of Bremen township. In fact, it 

 is not impossible that the Hebrew 

 dealers and the peddlers and the 

 "junkers" generally in the city send 

 out, perhaps under cover of darkness, 

 some of their own most striking speci- 

 mens in the hope of unloading on 

 somebody at a profit. Gypsies, too, 

 sometimes have a hand in this raffle 

 of equine derelicts. So it is a case of 

 diamond cut diamond, a lottery in 

 which the participants apparently en- 

 joy taking all the chances that attach 

 to swapping and trading in such trash. 



While the men-folk are wrangling 

 among themselves over the twenty- 



[156] 



