A GOOD POSITION IS HALF THE BATTLE. 417 



Under any circumstances that may induce a person 

 to send a horse to a repository, let me advise him 

 first to consider whether he is a competent judge of 

 his value (for what he may have given has nothing to 

 do with it) : if he is not a judge of the value of horses, 

 in the name of common sense let him consult some 

 one who really is; for as at least three-fourths of 

 buyers pay more for a horse than he is worth {in the 

 markef)^ so three-fourths expect a salesman to get 

 them a price the horse will not bring when thus 

 offered for sale. This ends in disappointment both 

 to the agent and the owner. If you go to a respect- 

 able man, tell him candidly all you know about your 

 horse, his failings as well as his merits ; if he really 

 knows you to be a man of good temper and good sense, 

 he will (if asked) not object to give an opinion of the 

 price you may expect, or something very near it : and 

 under such circumstances he should be allowed a dis- 

 cretionary power to either take what he considers the 

 first fair offer, or to hold the horse over if he feels 

 confident of getting a better. Of course this discre- 

 tionary power and this attention to his advice and 

 judgment, must only be awarded to a man known to 

 be one of integrity. 



If you send a horse to a man to whose general con- 

 duct you are a stranger, the mode of doing it should 

 be this : first get the horse examined by a known 

 veterinary surgeon : it is IO5. 6c?. generally well laid 

 out, for you may fancy you know whether he is sound 

 or not : if you do, there is not one owner in ten who 

 does. You may know he is not dead-lame, blind, or 

 broken-winded ; but there are many things very short 

 of .any of these that will make a Professional very 

 properly reject a horse as an unsound one. It therefore 



vol. I. e e 



