CAPTAIN SHABBYHOUNDE 243 



the thing, and assert they make money, even though 

 they lose. This is a sort of vice, or folly, that carries 

 its own correction along with it. Some again only 

 count their "gains," leaving the long catalogue of 

 losses to the account current, which somehow or 

 other never comes to be balanced. 



It has always appeared to us that the prejudice of 

 the day has affixed a very illiberal and unmerited 

 odium on the trade of a horse-dealer. Doubtless 

 there are scamps and cheats in the business, just as 

 there are scamps and cheats in all trades, but taking 

 them as a whole, we believe there is more honesty 

 among the regular dealers than there is among what 

 are called gentlemen dealers. Let us examine the 

 position and peculiarities of the two. The licensed 

 dealer generally does business in a large way ; for 

 one horse that passes through the hands of the 

 gentleman dealer he will have fifty through his, and 

 though quick sale is the soul of trade, and it is his 

 interest to keep passing horses through his hands, he 

 gets far more abused for an occasional failure than 

 the gentleman dealer, who must know all the faults 

 and weak points of his horses from the length of time 

 he keeps them, and the personal trials and examina- 

 tions he makes of them. We consider it just as 

 impossible for the licensed dealer — at least a licensed 

 dealer in a fair way of business — to know all the 

 ins and outs and peculiarities of the horses passing 

 through his hands, as it is for the gentleman dealer 

 to be ignorant of them. The licensed dealer must 

 occasionally make mistakes, must occasionally be 

 taken in himself, yet if he passes the deceptive horse 

 on quickly to a customer, he gets blown up and 

 abused, as if it had been a premeditated robbery. 



With respectable dealers, the faulty horses are the 

 exception, and not the general rule ; but we have too 

 much reason to think that with many of what are 

 called "gentlemen dealers" the faulty are the rule 



