166 THE LUNGS. 



or fourteen miles an hour, or perhaps he at 

 once goes " a-hunting." Now what is too 

 frequently the result of this absurd treatment ? 

 Why, what can be expected, but that the horse 

 should sometimes drop under his thoughtless 

 rider? or what needs he wonder, if on getting 

 home he finds his horse ill — bad with inflamed 

 lungs — and in a day or two, dead ? Then comes 

 the injustice of the thing. The purchaser takes 

 it into his head, or perhaps his groom or black- 

 smith puts it in for him, that the horse must have 

 been unsound when sold. A lawsuit accord- 

 ingly commences — some pretending old fool of 

 a farrier, who could not for his life tell whether 

 a certain part were sound or diseased, swears 

 that he opened the horse and found him " rotten 

 — rotten as a pear, and long unsound." It is not 

 inquired whether or not this witness is com- 

 petent to give evidence in such a case ; but the 

 court, taking that for granted, gives a verdict 

 in favour of the buyer. And thus the seller 

 suffers in pocket and in reputation, because one 

 man did not know how to take care of a horse, 

 and another did not know that a disease may 

 be set up and end in death, in six and thirty 



