12 CONFESSIONS OF A HOESE DEALER. 



A favourite plan among copers to get rid of an unsound 

 horse is to raffle him at some sporting public house where 

 the landlord is a bit horsey, the coper agreeing to spend 

 a handsome bonus, and stipulating that the winner shall 

 do the same and, by4he-bye, this latter sum often 

 amounts to more than the value of the horse. It is 

 customary in some towns, on the evening the raffle takes 

 place, for the subscribers to have a supper. The sort of 

 people who generally subscribe to horse raffles are trades- 

 men who keep a horse themselves, and the list very often 

 includes a veterinary surgeon, the brewer, the spirit 

 merchant, the ginger-beer and soda-water maker, the 

 cigar dealer, or their representatives ; then there is the 

 horse-breaker, with his corduroy breeches and well- 

 spurred boots, with a flash scarf round his neck, a shil- 

 ling pin stuck in it, and a heavy riding- whip in his hand, 

 monopolising all the conversation with that trotting 

 butcher ; their small, but loud talk is about Earey. 



" He be d d," says the horse-breaker (query, spoiler). 

 " This is the boy to tame 'em," says he, as he drops the 

 loaded handle of the whip on the table, and makes the 

 glasses containing the aqua fortis and hot water fairly 

 jingle again. " Thank goodness his day and doctrine are 

 about over, and he will soon be (as the farm labourer 

 said of the hunted fox) 'gone up th* sough, gent? em.' " 



The raffle is generally announced as follows : " To be 



raffled for, at the Inn, a splendid black gelding, 



rising six-years old, 15 hands 2 inches high, and goes 

 well in saddle or harness, by fifty members at one guinea 



