70 PRECEPT AND PRACTICE. 



giving. By this I mean from a hundred and twenty 

 to a hundred and fifty is often the price given for a 

 mere pony, or rather galloway, with no other re- 

 commendation than ordinary pleasantry, and, above 

 all, perfect safety to the rider, who peradventure was 

 one of the Lord's anointed. 



I have said that respectable dealers do not in a 

 general way buy odd horses that they know little or 

 nothing about ; in the first place, a low price will 

 not tempt such men to get a horse they cannot sell 

 to their customers with credit to themselves and satis- 

 faction to the purchaser. Without entering on the 

 subject of whether their sense of rectitude may or 

 may not influence them, a first-rate dealer would not 

 dare, and we will do them the justice to say would 

 not be disposed, to sell a very faulty horse to a 

 customer ; he would lose caste by so doing, and it 

 would answer his purpose far better in the long run 

 to give a hundred for a horse, and sell him at only ten 

 pounds profit, than it would to buy another at forty 

 and sell him at a hundred, which his looks and some 

 of his qualifications might enable the dealer to do. 



