The Sale of Les Epinards.
I had noticed in a farm paper the advertisement of an auction sale of Percheron horses to be held at the farm of a breeder in an adjoining state. I slipped down there a few days before the date of sale, and picked out a nice looking, two-year-old stallion and on the day of sale bid $320 and the horse was sold to me. A pedigree was thrown in, but as it was written in the English language and the horse had a common, pronounceable name, I discarded it and christened him Les Epinards. At that time I didn’t know what Les Epinards meant, but remembered having seen it somewhere. I shipped him to a small town and started in to organize a company to buy him for $2,800. The pedigree proposition bothered me until I heard Billie was organizing a company in the next county. He very kindly lent me a pedigree that he had in his trunk which answered very well for Les Epinards. It was natural for me to say that the Epinards were celebrated breeders over in France who always named their horses after themselves. The name and the horse made a hit, and in six weeks’ time I had the signatures of ten farmers each for $280, four of them good, and the others just well enough known to the banker to cut down his discount 15 per cent. As it was a joint note, the banker realized in full and I came out of the sale in this fashion:
| Price to company | $2,800 | |
| EXPENSES | ||
| Paid for the horse | $320 | |
| Freight | 12 | |
| Bank discount | 420 | |
| Board | 60 | |
| Paid cappers | 150 | |
| Groom | 55 | |
| Feed | 18 | 1,035 |
| Profit | $1,765 | |
Now that’s what Tummy would call “financial acumen.” I bought a horse at an auction sale for $320, shipped him to another county in the same state and sold him for $2,800. It gradually dawned on me that there was more money in the selling than there was in the breeding and raising. Tummy was a wise boy, but I was beginning to learn a few things myself.
The same paper published the following, October 1, 1905: