BUYING 5 



auctions, and every little thing that is done, is done 

 for the purpose of bamboozling the buyer into think- 

 ing the horse is better than he is. If the animal is 

 badly made he is shown under saddle, as he will prob- 

 ably look better " dressed up"; if, on the other hand, 

 he is bad-mannered, he will most probably be shown 

 in hand, thus giving him little chance to play up when 

 led judiciously around the ring with little freedom 

 of the head. 



All horses are described glowingly in auction lists, 

 and if one could believe half of the contents one would 

 think that the horseman's Eldorado had been reached. 

 The words "safe and kind; has been hunted by a lady," 

 interpreted by those "in the know," suggest that the 

 selfsame lady is now lying somewhere with her toes 

 turned up to the roots of the daisies as the result 

 of this hunting. The phrase "will jump anything," 

 rightly read, might mean either that the animal will 

 jump anything — providing, of course, that you can 

 ever persuade him to get near enough in order to be 

 able to jump it — or else, that he literally plunges over 

 crags and chasms when you are merely meaning to go 

 out for a quiet little hack. 



Buying young or green horses from the breeders or 

 farmers in Virginia or Canada, or picking up promising 

 discards from the race-track is an amusing, and often 

 fairly cheap, method of obtaining horses, but in com- 

 mon with importing horses from England or Ireland, 

 it is only successful when attempted by a thoroughly 

 experienced horseman and should never be tried by 

 the novice. 



It takes a fair degree of knowledge to pick even an 

 ordinary hack or hunter, and to choose a show horse 

 requires more than an exceptional eye for a horse; it 



