A publican named Newman bought me, but I was with him only a week—I was too slow, he said—and then he tried to sell me. Several men came to his stable, but none cared to strike a bargain, so the publican got up a raffle, with forty members at ten shillings per head. The humiliation of being disposed of in this way has haunted me ever since, but like other things I have learnt to bear it. A Mr. Somerfield won me; but he was a railway clerk, without either the accommodation for keeping or the time to use a horse, and I was sold again at once to a chimney sweep.
He took me home, and put me into a stable with a tall bony horse belonging to a carrier who worked between Hornsey and London. I tried to make friends with this horse at once, and found that I had no easy task ahead of me, for my companion, naturally rather inclined to be grumpy, was furthermore suffering from a very bad cold.
Kind words and patience, however, are capital things, and within an hour we were chatting confidentially together. From him I learned that the life of a carrier’s horse was a very hard one—out all weathers, standing about in the cold and wet, and journeying a long way with very heavy loads to drag, and sometimes, especially about Christmas time, the work of the day was not over until past midnight.
‘They don’t think much about our welfare,’ concluded my companion with a sigh; ‘when one horse is worn-out they buy another, and work him to death in his turn.’
‘Are worn-out carriers’ horses taken to the—the—ahem!—the knackers?’ I inquired.
I knew I was upon delicate ground, and tried to put the question as pleasantly as possible. My companion answered with perfect freedom.
‘Some go to the knacker’s,’ he replied. ‘But very few of us are entirely worn-out; there is a little life left in us yet, and we go to the cab proprietors generally for night work.’
‘To run in the night cabs?’
‘Just so.’
‘What sort of work is that?’ I asked.