230 THE HUNTING FIELD 



slurring^ over that constitutes one of the great difficulties of 

 gentlemen dealing. You must have a servant in your confi- 

 dence — you must, to a certain extent, place yourself in the 

 power of that servant, and where is the gentleman who would 

 like to feel himself under such domination ! Of course, gentle- 

 men must both buy and sell : it is the buying with the view of 

 selling again to a profit that constitutes the horse-dealer. The 

 best plan is for a man to look upon horses as an article of 

 luxury, for which he must expect to pa}' something, instead of 

 expecting a profit, and then that man is best off who pays least. 

 It is not worth any gentleman's while, for the sake of a five, 

 ten, or even a fifty pound note, saj'ing anything about a horse 

 that he knows is not borne out by the facts. We have heard 

 men assert that anything is fair in horse-dealing, but that is the 

 mere bravado of some notorious cheat, wanting to carry off his 

 delinquencies on a general principle. Lying is never allowed 

 among gentlemen — above all, lying for self-interest. If any 

 one doubts the truth of this position, let him observe the cool- 

 ness, the shirking, the cutting that attends a man of this 

 description in the hunting field. Instead of the hearty, joyous 

 welcome that greets the legitimate sportsman, there are cold, 

 sour looks and mutterings about cheating scamp, and wonder- 

 ings who he is come to " do " now. In remote parts there is 

 no scope for this kind of work ; a false deal or two does for a 

 man, and no one will look at his horses after ; and even in 

 London and the metropolitan hunts it is wonderful how soon a 

 man is " blown."' In our opinion, gentlemen dealing, with a 

 view to money-making, is the most unpromising of all specula- 

 tions. Some men have a vanity about the thing, and assert 

 they make money, even though they lose. This is a sort of 

 vice, or foil}-, that carries its own correction along with it. 

 Some again only count their "gains," leaving the long 

 catalogue of losses to the account current, which somehow or 

 other never comes to he balanced. 



