CHAPTER I 

 BUYING 



"The ways of a man with a maid 

 Be strange, but tame 

 To the ways of a man with a horse 

 When buying or selling the same." 



— Kipling. 



A Tuscan proverb says that in buying a horse or 

 taking a wife, shut your eyes tight and commend 

 yourself to God. I am not so sure but that there is 

 a whole lot of truth in it. Marriage and buying horses 

 are both a lottery, and while it is certain that the more 

 brains you put into the choice the better chance you 

 run of its turning out satisfactorily, still there is no 

 guarantee that even the wisest will not sometimes 

 be fooled. 



There are many different types of buyers and many 

 ways of buying horses. There is, for example, the 

 excessively rich man or woman trying to get into 

 society via the door labelled " Horse Shows" who de- 

 sires to own a large stable, which, once they have 

 acquired it, will cease to interest them. They will, 

 in all probability, do their buying by giving their 

 manager or stud-groom carte blanche to get the best 

 that money can buy. If the groom or manager hap- 

 pens to be honest, and is a good horseman, he will, 

 by means of an unnecessarily large expenditure of 

 money, collect a fair enough stable of animals. How- 

 ever, such good luck is rare. To be a really good 

 judge of a horse requires more brains than the average 



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