418 HALF A LOAF BETTER THAN NO BREAD. 



saves time and expense learning this beforehand. 

 Send your horse with a written description of his 

 qualifications and his price ; say he will be left with 



Mr. so many days for sale ; and if not sold by 



that day, he will be fetched away. Desire no offers 

 may be communicated to you, as you have made up 

 your mind, and sent his lowest price ; and state he has 

 passed a veterinary surgeon as sound. All this will 

 show an honest man what to do ; and it will show a 

 rogue you are not one to be played with. I might 

 be asked whether a Nickem would not, even in this 

 case, begin some of his tricks ? He might, but I should 

 say he would not : for there are so many with whom 

 he can do so with impunity, that he would not run 

 the risk with one where it seemed likely he could not : 

 and if he has reason to think you are not one he can 

 bamboozle out of 20/., he will rather get his commis- 

 sion by selling your horse, than only get the bare 

 livery ; so he will sell him, or at least try to do so. 



I have endeavoured to give my reader sufficient 

 hints of the proper and improper practices of dealers 

 and repository keepers to enable him to judge a little 

 of what is intended by either. I have stated many 

 things that may be done by any one in the horse 

 trade, also many things that sometimes are done ; but 

 let me entreat him not to imagine they are always 

 done. 



A man conversant with the thing might write a 

 treatise on the mode by which property is abstracted 

 from our persons by pickpockets : this does not make 

 pickpockets more numerous, nor need we clap our hands 

 on our pockets whenever we meet a person in the 

 street. Pockets are occasionally picked, and by pick- 

 pockets; men are occasionally robbed, and by horse- 



