And the farmer gets off his waggon and looks in the horse’s mouth.
Here, as all the way along in this “dicker,” the horse-trader has been too sharp for the farmer, and the horse’s teeth have been nicely filed and his horse is made to appear only seven years old.
A swap is made at length on even terms, and this horse-trading jockey drives off with the farmer’s valuable colt, worth about $165, and leaving for it an old used-up horse, worth perhaps $80 at most. And these horse-traders are not gipsies either, for every one expects them to trade horses, but men in the community, who, take them out of their own specialty, pass as respectable men. Between services at the church this trader slyly tells his neighbor how he got $125 the better of So-and-so at the last trade, with a sly laugh and a cough. With his forefinger he digs his companion gently in the ribs, and in great confidence tells him that he knows where there is another whopping good trade for him. A bank account this man has, too, and in every way is the pink of perfection, save in his own peculiar business; pays his bills promptly, dresses his family well, and is never backward in his contributions to the church, and is really, as he pretends to be, a decent man. But on a horse trade he would cheat his own father. Just how he reconciles this peculiarity with his theology we have never been able to discover, but somehow his theology is elastic enough to stretch over the point, and he conveniently allows it to do so.
Maybe it’s a horse I want to sell, and I have advertised the fact in the local papers. After tea, and on the eve of setting out for a drive, this horse-buyer comes along and inquires for the “boss.”
“Understands I want to sell a horse,” and I tell him that the hired man is in the stable and will show him the horse.
But he must talk with the “boss,” and I am forced to go to the stable with this would-be buyer.
“Bring out that Clyde horse, John; this gentleman wants to buy him,” and John leads by the halter the horse which six months ago I paid $180 for, and now having no further use for him, I wish to convert into bankable funds.
“Rather stocky, and just a little heavy in the legs,” and I prepare myself to hear my good, sound, strong horse so run down as to be only fit for slowest and easiest work on a farm.
“You’d be asking as much as $125 for that horse, I suppose, boss?”
Now, as far as I have ever known or can discover, I never yet heard of any one selling a horse for as much as he gave for it, unless he belonged to the horse-dealing fraternity. I reply, however, “A hundred and forty dollars is my price for this horse, and I paid $40 more for him only six months ago.”