NOT TO BE HAD. 271 



week's time, without the right to return him. When 

 he takes up his foot, he looks at those parts that are 

 generally the present or future seat of disease: he 

 looks at his mouth, and learns all Muff did by so 

 doing, and a little more : he does not merely look to 

 see if the appearance of the mouth corresponds with 

 the age told him, for he pretty well guesses that the 

 mouth will naturally (or by artificial means be made 

 to) indicate the specified age ; but it is to be certain 

 that artificial means have not been resorted to that 

 he looks, and this nothing short of a very competent 

 judge can detect. Should the horse show much 

 unwillingness to allow his mouth to be opened, our 

 friend Wide-awake would examine it with double 

 scrutiny ; and if he found no tricks had been played 

 as to age, he would very naturally infer that balling 

 had for some reasons been pretty frequently in use. 

 Having done this, looking at the eyes and coughing 

 him has of course not been omitted. It is not my 

 province to give, if I was capable of it, a treatise on 

 eyes, though I do not think I should quite buy a 

 blind one; and as to coughing, I must make one 

 observation : some horses who have often undergone 

 this process become so irritable in the throat that 

 they cough the moment it is touched; others, from 

 the same cause, namely practice, can hardly be made 

 to cough at all ; while the thoroughly-sound unprac- 

 tised horse, on being tried, gives a fine sound vigorous 

 cough, and there ends it : for though a broken-winded 

 one may be so dosed and set as to be made to breathe 

 like a sound one for many hours, I defy all the 

 lowest thieves of dealers in the world to make him 

 cough like a sound one. All these preliminaries 

 having been gone through, our friend (as I may very 



