38 PURCHASING FROM THE STABLES. 



properly shod ; in short, a brute will in a month be 

 perfection, if you will only hand over your rupees. 

 All this spluttering balderdash proves, either that 

 they known nothing at all about a horse, or else that 

 they are trying to deceive you : the former is the 

 most charitable supposition, and, no doubt, the cor- 

 rect one, though a very large share of the latter is 

 always mixed up with it. When, therefore, you hear 

 arguments so truly nonsensical, and thinly-veiled as 

 these, the sooner you unfold your knowledge of 

 human nature, if you have none of a horse's, the 

 richer you will find yourself in pocket. 



Another deceptive mode of talking, shallow enough 

 certainly, but peculiar to the Bomb Proof,* is in this 

 way : When the stride is found shortened and 

 clumsy, from having been overweighted by riding or 

 carrying heavy burdens a very common occurrence 

 the answer is, " Oh, that was done in Arabia ;" or, 

 " he was always so." Well, if overweighted in Ara- 

 bia when he was young, and the action injured in 

 consequence, the chances are a hundred to one against 

 his ever recovering it, unless a very powerful horse, 

 and always after ridden by a* light weight of seven or 

 eight stone : and if he was by nature always so, why, 

 then of course, it is incurable. When the eyes are 

 dim, or cataracts forming : " Oh ! that's only from the 

 heat of the stables." When the legs are injured, and 

 the back sinews all bowed : " Oh ! that's only from the 

 heel-ropes, or a tent-peg :" just as if it made any dif- 

 ference to the purchaser whether the eyesight was 

 injured by the heat of the stables or a pitchfork ; or 

 the legs ruined by a tent-peg, or a sledge hammer. 



* Stables where the Arab dealers keep their horses. ED. 



