HONEST DEALEBS. 127 



Coper. "I have the warranty ready written. My 

 Missus got her lawyer to draw it up. Here it is, sir. 

 It only wants filling up with your name, sir." 



The gentleman took the warranty and the coper to 

 his hotel, and paid him 126 for a pair of the most 

 miserable screws that ever were collared. One had a 

 pair of bog spavins, and was a wheezer ; the other was 

 a curby-hocked roarer of at least seventeen summers* 

 This was, of course, soon discovered by the gentleman's 

 groom. He wrote to Mrs. Hardacre, the widow lady, 

 but his letter came back, marked " returned paid letter." 

 The horses were sold for 27, and are now in the hands 

 of a notorious gang of chaunting copers in the west end 

 of London, and are constantly being sold to gentlemen 

 who are on the look-out for cheap horses, and rebought 

 by the agents of these copers. But, again, let me re- 

 mind horse-buyers that if they want fashion, substance, 

 and quality combined, they must be prepared to pay the 

 breeder a fair price for the judgment and risk always 

 consequent upon raising the best kind of horse stock, 

 and which always find a ready market with the London 

 dealers of position. 



The true horse coper will seldom stoop to any other 

 species of roguery but that of cheating the inexperienced 

 horse buyer ; but there is a class of men who regularly 

 frequent fairs and the vicinity of horse repositories, who 

 dress and ape the horsey style of gait so peculiar to the 

 coper ; these are neither more nor less than thieves in 

 disguise, They would as soon knock a man down on 



