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little horse seemed to correspond with my wishes, 

 and on trial he suited my taste. '* What is the 

 figure ?" " Twenty pounds." My suspicions were 

 awakened, but I said nothing. He went freely, 

 and neither stumbled nor shied. I gave him the 

 reins and galloped him above a mile, most of it at 

 speed. His wind was good ; he was aged, but 

 showed no symptoms of over-work. I could not 

 detect unsoundness, and I bought him, warranted. 

 The next day he walked against a brick-wall, and 

 for the first time I discovered that he was blind ! 

 yet it was only scientific inspection that could have 

 found even a blemish in his eyes. Blindness is 

 not unsoundness in horse-dealing law, whatever 

 it might be deemed by Sir James Mansfield : I 

 therefore sold him and sustained no loss ; on the 

 contrary I gained, as in a former instance, a 

 valuable lesson for nothingo 



I am selecting the most instructive cases only, 

 and therefore pass by scores of other mishaps 

 like this. I ran the gauntlet through Osborne's, 

 Tattersall's, and the Bazaar, and between the one 

 and the other learnt that in a horse-dealer's esti- 

 mation, unsoundness does not and cannot exist — ■ 

 in a farrier's judgment every horse in creation is 

 unsound unless the seller is his customer. I went 

 to a very celebrated place (I dare not mention 



