14 OCCASIONAL HAPPY THOUGHTS. 



specimen of my style in lypical DevelopDients^ Vol. VI. ^ On 

 Normal Causation Socially Considered — and has not, of 

 course, much to do with my going in search of a horse. 

 Still, it occurred to me. Before now, I've been nearly two 

 hours getting from Langham Church to Leicester Square, 

 simply because people would button-hole me in Regent 

 Street. And meeting my Casual Sporting Friend was an 

 opportunity to put before the world my Theory of Gra- 

 tnitons Assmnptions^ which was not to be lost. Pas- 

 sons I ] 



My Casual Acquaintance, the cause of the foregoing dis- 

 cursiveness, says, shaking his head, 



" Ah ! horses are a price now. Why, you can't look at 

 one under eighty guineas." 



" Of course, as a fact, I have looked at one for less, and, 

 to take it literally, as merely meaning looking at a horse 

 and nothing else, I have looked at one — at several — for 

 nothing. 



To be always " going to look at a horse " is, by the way, 

 the most inexpensive way of getting a reputation for being 

 " deuced well off." 



" I went," says my Casual Acquaintance, fiercely, as if 

 recalling the incident vividly to his own mind, and challeng- 

 ing anyone to contradict him, " I went to look at a mare at 

 Chick's place, over the hill by Cooper's Gravel Pits, you 

 know " 



I nod ; so as to help him on : but I don't know. How- 

 ever, such names as " Chick's place " and " Cooper's Gravel 

 Pits" have a country-gentleman sort of ring about them, 



