A TRUMP CARD. 225 



hands you your money at once, and the transaction 

 is ended. 



It not unfrequently happens that a particular horse 

 or two are brought into the fair for which an as- 

 tounding price is demanded. This does not frighten 

 a dealer of high repute : if he really sees him to be 

 what he would call " cjuite a nice one," price does not 

 deter him : he makes up his mind to have him, and 

 have him he will ; twenty or thirty pounds more or 

 less makes no difference in his determination, for 

 with a horse of this sort, it is not whether he expects 

 to get twenty or thirty pounds profit, but that he 

 intends to make eighty or a hundred by him. He, 

 therefore, often buys him at a price that makes 

 bystanders stare (if there happen to be any) ; he 

 is quite right: he knows of purchasers ready for 

 such a horse at any price he may choose to ask 

 for him the day he gets him home, for when horses 

 get beyond a certain price, their value is nominal — 

 it is in fact what certain men will give rather than 

 go without them. He knows this, and it is his in- 

 terest not to let such a horse escape him : he will 

 probably pay better than half a dozen of his other 

 purchases. 



It is the usual practice of dealers, when they have 

 bought, say a dozen horses, to send them off to some 

 town ten or fifteen miles from the fair. This is done 

 for several reasons : it gets them thus far on their way 

 home the day they are bought, they rest better out 

 of the noise of a fair, and it saves considerable ex- 

 pense in stable room ; for it is a frequent trick with 

 innkeepers to charge enormously for stalls during 

 any of the great fairs. These horses stand in the 

 town to which they have been sent till those that 



. VOL. I. Q 



