A TRUMP CAKD. 225 



hands you your money at once, and the transaction 

 is ended. 



It not unfrequently happens that a particular horse 

 or two are brought into the fair for which an as- 

 tounding price is demanded. This does not frighten 

 a dealer of high repute : if he really sees him to be 

 what he would call " quite a nice one," price does not 

 deter him : he makes up his mind to have him, and 

 have him he will ; twenty or thirty pounds more or 

 less makes no difference in his determination, for 

 with a horse of this sort, it is not whether he expects 

 to get twenty or thirty pounds profit, but that he 

 intends to make eighty or a hundred by him. He, 

 therefore, often buys him at a price that makes 

 bystanders stare (if there happen to be any) ; he 

 is quite right: he knows of purchasers ready for 

 such a horse at any price he may choose to ask 

 for him the day he gets him home, for when horses 

 get beyond a certain price, their value is nominal 

 it is in fact what certain men will give rather than 

 go without them. He knows this, and it is his in- 

 terest not to let such a horse escape him : he will 

 probably pay better than half a dozen of his other 

 purchases. 



It is the usual practice of dealers, when they have 

 bought, say a dozen horses, to send them off to some 

 town ten or fifteen miles from the fair. This is done 

 for several reasons : it gets. them thus far on their way 

 home the day they are bought, they rest better out 

 of the noise of a fair, and it saves considerable ex- 

 pense in stable room ; for it is a frequent trick with 

 innkeepers to charge enormously for stalls during 

 any of the great fairs. These horses stand in the 

 town to which they have been sent till those that 



VOL. i. Q 



