34 THE COMPLETE HORSEMAN 



to be successful it is necessary he should be a fine 

 judge as well as a fine horseman and such men 

 do not require much advice about the purchase 

 of horses. 



There is one thing I should advise my reader 

 to avoid. Do not let your groom buy your 

 horses. You are not certain to be suited and 

 you are certain to pay dearly for what you buy. 

 And, strange though it may seem, this is not 

 entirely due to grooms having favourite dealers. 

 Considering how much they are amongst horses 

 grooms, as a class, are not good judges, though of 

 course there are many good judges amongst them, 

 and many upright trustworthy men. I know 

 of one man who bought all the horses for a large 

 hunt over a great number of years, and who 

 spent considerably over £100,000 of his master's 

 money on horseflesh. And I may say that I knew 

 of no hunt better or more economically mounted. 

 But this was a man of exceptional abihty. 



And this brings me to the delicate question 

 of grooms' Commissions. Ever since I can re- 

 member if a fresh horse came into the stable 

 the groom expected his fee out of the price. In 

 the old days the dealers used when bargaining 

 v/ith each other, sometimes to stipulate that each 

 should give the other's groom a sovereign. Then 

 it became the custom for the vendor to give a 

 sovereign or two to the purchaser's groom, and 

 this custom grew till it became an abuse and a 

 scandal. In one instance that came to my notice 

 a few years ago a man had the assurance to ask 



