238 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



they take a very strong fancy, purchase a contingent 

 interest in some of them. Their new owners aim at 

 keeping them at least a year, but seldom more than 

 two, and they frequently find them a temporary 

 stable-mate at the great Lincoln Fair each April. 

 The latter are expected to produce a profit of 28 to 

 25 per cent, for their three months' strong keep up 

 to Horncastle, or else they hardly realize their new 

 owners 7 sole idea of " paying for August." Dealers' 

 payments, we may add, are obliged to be prompt and 

 good, as the farmers are not '' discount-men," al- 

 though the reported prices at great fairs must be 

 read with considerable mental discount. Sellers in- 

 variably state the prices they ask, not what they get ; 

 and we remember an instance where the actual price 

 for three which were bought by a hunting-man, in 

 one lot, was 380 below what appeared in the news- 

 paper report of the fair ! The most successful private 

 sellers of horses we know, are that sly, half horse- 

 dealing, half farmer race, who stick their hats into 

 the nape of their necks, and talk, quite simply and 

 softly, close into your face; men, in short, who are 

 wonderfully clever fellows, but who deceive you by 

 looking like utter fools. Their great dodge is to 

 crab the good points of the horse they want to sell : 

 "Varra fine horse, but don't you think he's not 

 varra good about the shoolders ?" was the comment 

 we heard one of them make, as he asked a rattling 

 price (on the ground that he " didn't care to part 

 with him for a bit") for an animal whose shoulders 

 were faultless. Away went the intended purchaser 

 to a friend, who knew the horse's points better than 

 he did the owner's, and was told to buy him directly, 

 as " the fool doesn't know what a good horse he 

 has ;" and " the fool" grinned in his sleeve accord- 

 ingly. Perhaps a northern breeder of hunters, some 

 twenty years since, got rid of three in the neatest 

 way to a nobleman, who did not care so very much 



