VARIATION AND SPECULATION. 223 



I stated, a few pages back, that probably the dealer 

 might ask something like 130/. for the horse he had 

 bought at 100/. Now I by.no means intend to infer 

 that this is about the average advance he would ask 

 on his purchase : this must all depend on the parti- 

 cular merits of each horse. What may be his average 

 profits on all his horses, nothing but his books can tell. 

 On some his profit will be enormous, and on some a 

 very moderate one ; some will only save their price 

 and expenses ; by some he will lose considerably, 

 while occasionally from deaths or accidents, he must 

 lose both cost-price and expenses in toto. This very 

 great fluctuation may appear singular to a person not 

 conversant with this particular trade : it is, never- 

 theless, a true statement of the fact. 



It never struck me till this moment that I possessed 

 intuitive genius or talents of the higher order : I am, 

 however, now quite convinced that such is the case, 

 inasmuch as I found out, in some part of these hints, 

 that a horse is not a mahogany dining-table : till he 

 is, the profits on his purchase can never be reduced 

 to anything like a certainty. This arises in a great 

 measure from the very little time first-rate dealers can 

 bestow in the examination of each horse they buy. 

 A dealer of inferior grade, who intends purchasing 

 half a dozen horses, can afford to lose two or three 

 days in the purchase of them ; and if he saves 20/. by 

 so doing, it answers his purpose, and he is well paid 

 for his time, trouble, and the numberless underhand 

 tricks he has made use of to get them at his own 

 price of which I purpose giving some idea when I 

 speak of this class of dealer. Not so with the large 

 dealer : he purchases perhaps fifty high-priced horses 

 in two days : he cannot afford, on an average, ten mi- 

 nutes to the examination of each horse : his practised 



