SELLING A HORSE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 101, 15 January 1870, Page 7

SELLING A HORSE.

BY CORNELIUS o'DOWD (CHARLES LEVER).

I have often thought that there was no more searching test of a man's temper and self-control than to submit him for an hour or so to the insolent demands and outrageous insinuations of a cross-examining barrister, If a painful operation in surgery wei'e to be conducted, not for the extirpation of some baneful disease, or to arrest the progress of some dangei*ous malady, but solely to display what there might be of disorder or imparred organisation in the patient — if the man were to be operated on to discover whether the valves of his aorta were in good working order, his lungs free from adhesions, and his digestive organs in good repair, — it is just possible that the enquiry wpuld cost a great deal more than the answer was worth ; and yet the system of cross-examination proceeds very much on =in assumption of this nature ; and is far less directed to elicit truth and unravel difficulty than to confuse and confound some unhappy individual who, awed by the solemnity of, the occasion and the novelty of the place, finds himself subjected to a series of impertinent reflections, corrections, and sneers, with the palpable design that, proving too much for his temper, he may betray himself into anger, and, worse, perhaps into self-contradiction. How poor a figure men cut under this torturing process— even of brains and ability — our daily journals inform us, since not only is the witness strictly limited to the terms cf an unqualified reply, but the slightest attempt to resist the insolence of his questioner, or to retort on his rudeness, is suppressed by the court, at the threat of punishment held over him. The judge is like an old sportsman, in fact, who, though he no longer follows the hounds himself, enjoys a run amazingly \ and while etiquette forbids him giving a " tallyho," his concurrent smile and genial look shows that his heart is with the chase. It is indeed a manvais quart d'heure that a man spends in the wit-ness-box ; but I solemnly declare that I'd rather be worried by Coleridge, or badgered by Chambers, than I'd go j through the course of mortification, impertinence, and outrage incurred in the operation of selling a horse.

There are men who have never gone through the process, and who will not unnaturally perhaps set down what I have said to some peculiar fretfulness or impatience on my part — some native irritability, and say, Why should the sale of a horse be a greater trial of temper than that of a house, a farm, a pleasure-boat, or a bale of merchandise 1 And I reply, Simply because it is not a house, a farm, a pleasure-boat, or a bale of merchandise, but a horse is the thing to be sold. Of course I do not apply what I have said to all horses, nor to the screw you drive over to the station on damp mornings, or the slave that takes you ovit to dinner, and waits till all hours to bring you back ; nor to the cob with the initial spavin, that starts always on three legs, and never comes to the fouith till he and you are bathed in perspiration ; nor to that old wall-eyed grey that, being a daisycutter in youth, is now a stone-breaker, and stumbles over every third step in his ti ot : from each of these you accept severance with equanimity and calm. You took their services while you had them with as little sense of an identity about them as a mackintosh cape or umbrella. I speak of the horse that you cared for and affectionated — the horse you rode with satisfaction to yourself, and admiration from the world — the horse you had carefully " made to your hand," whose temper, studied and well considered, you had adjusted exactly to your own requirements — the animal that knew you and your passing mood of chagrin, depression, good spirits or bad, as nothing else in your household did or could know you — who exulted, in your days of buoyancy with a bounding animation, as he sympathises in your sadder hours with a quiet demeanour — a thorough courtier, in fact, if it be not abuse of terms to call him anything so loyal and so faithful, a courtier. It is, indeed, a hard necessity that compels you to part with him. No need to ask the nature of the necessity. You have been at the wrong side of the post with fortune. There are various ways of being so, and that is enough. You are driven to that moral death which people blandly call retrenchment. Only they who have gone through this operation know anything of its tortures. All the things which have grown up around you, till from familiarity they become part of you — the very compliments of your nature, without which you could not address yourself to grave thought, nor give yourself up to gay enjoyment — all these to be chronicled and catalogued in an auctioneer's list, and scattered to the four winds of heaven ! Your study table, at which your woven fancies were manufactured into " copy," sent to a counting-house. Those green morocco j causeuses, on which your choicest friends | loved to lounge and smoke, while wit and wisdom blended themselves in the talk, and men showed how an Attic flavour could season the easy cod verse of daily life — these have caught the eye of a cigar-divan proprietor. And so it is with everything — the half-dozen pictures you picked up in your rambles abroad — that Cuyp at Haarlem ; that Mieris at Bruges; that Andrea del Sarto at Bologna f and the sweet bft of

glory and splendour by Paulo Veronese chanced upon at Venice — your wonderful '34 Mai'gaux, sent to you as a special favour of that rare producer and exquisite judge, M. Lallande — that delicious tipple of velvety softness and delicate aroma, every drop of which was priceless — brought in for a freshman at Oriel, to be " wined " at orgies over broiled bones and devilled biscuits, and suchlike abominations — emblems all of the baser uses we ourselves are coming to.

These things, however, you part with painfully, regretfully, and sorrowfully ; but the sympathy with inanimate objects does not touch you in the tenderest point. At last you hear some one call out, " Is there not a liver-chest-nut hackney 1 I thought I saw something about a six-yeai'-old horse, warranted .sound, and perfectly trained to the saddle." Now are your troubles about to begin in earnest : you have borne the taste of your drawing-room furniture to be abused — its over-gor-geousness, or its excessive severity ; you have hear-d your Vandyke called a copy, and your Rembrandt a " croute ;" your claret, too, has been pronounced flat from age, deficient in bouquet, and weak in colour ; and your Persian carpet, for whose authenticity the faintness of the tints vouched, has been declared to be almost worn out. Well, you have gulped down your • indignation, and perhaps consoled yourself in thinking of the ignorance of your critics ; but now has come the moment when ignorance becomes insult, and censure an open offence. You bear up tolerably well at being told that it is a pity he is not grey, or black, or bay, or roan ; that the purchaser hates chestnut'; that chestnuts are hasty, fretful, hot-tempered, and so on, and that he would not take a present of a chestnut ; then from another that he is too tall, or too short — without exactly saying for what — that he has something treacherous about his eye, or that his tale is not set in some peculiar fashion which the buyer admires ; but at length you come to more touching censures than these.

" Shows a deal of work — those forelegs won't stand it .much longer — back tendon knotted a good deal !." cries one ; " A leetle bit too straight in the pastern for my taste," says another, " and feet a trifle too small — bad shoeing would soon contract the heel for you." " What's this here I—capped1 — capped hock — ah ! and a thread of blood-spavin too. That's enough for me." " Are you sure his wind is all i-ight V asks a third. " I thought he flanked a good deal after that canter. Would you mind letting your servant give him a sharp gallop 1 has he carried a lady 1 will he run leader 1 how does he jump timber ? " are all poured in upon you by people who have no thought of a deal ; and once more come in the doubts upon " that eye, or that tendon, or that frog." Now, with a full conviction of your beast's soundness, and a thorough belief in your critics' ignorance, these suspicions are so many insults to your understanding, and wounds to your pride. Had there been no question of sale, you would have resented these impertinences as personal injuries. The converse of " Love me, love my dog," is " Abuse my horse, abuse me."

Last of all comes the fellow r who walks round your beast, with Ms eye ranging from the pastern joint to the knee — never higher, and, with a jerk of the head to the groom, says, " Take him in." That wretch I could fire every barrel of my revolver at.

Although you are well aware that the animus of all these disparagements is to knook something off the price — that in every censure of your beast's ears, or mane, or tail, there is the question of a ten-pound note — the insolence is not diminished by that consciousness. You arrive at last at the fatal faot — that where money comes in, courtesy goes out, and that he who has to dispose of anything, enters the field as a dealer, and must look for no other civilities than such as ai*e common with his craft.

Where a man's love for his horse has become a sort of family affection — where the honesty of the animal has made itself a place, like a trusted quality, in his regard — where you feel that sort of attachment that it is no abuse of terms to call friendship for your beast, it is a sore trial to hear his points discussed by ignorance, and his powers descanted on by flippant insufficiency.

For my part, I have to own that I have never figured in the position without feeling like a slave-dealer. It was as though I was setting up for sale, not only the strong thews and sinews that had served me, but the sterling qualities of temper, courage, and endurance — the brave intrepidity that had carried me nobly through danger — the dash and spirit that had rallied my own heart to daring, and the loyal obedience that had yielded to my will, even when that will had been little better than a caprice, if not half a cruelty.

Perhaps the worst of all, however, is the sense that throughout the whole transaction you are treated like one little better than a swindler; every assertion you make doubted, and every assurance you gave of your beast's soundness, temper, or performance, set down to the score of an unprincipled rascal, who would perjure his soul for the chance of. a stray five-pound note. The men who would listen to you with

respect and deference possibly on any other subject, who would hear your opinions on matters of weightier mo ment, and accord you at least the courtesy of appearing to think you a person of truth and character, have here no' scruple whatever in showing that they distrust and disbelieve you ; that they look upon you as a man pleading to a cei'tain brief, and only eager for his fee. The people who woxxld not impugn your veracity, nor think of treating you with discredit, have not the slightest hesitation now in listening to you with open incredulity, and actually permit themselves the liberty of cutting jokes on your assertions — and all this because you arc about to sell your horse !