Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1869 — What a Man Must Endure Who Has a Steed For Sale. [ARTICLE]

What a Man Must Endure Who Has a Steed For Sale.

It is safe to conclude from “ Cornelius O’Dowd’s" reflections under this title in Blackwood's, for June, that he has lately had a little trying experience of the heavy redaction in price to which horse flesh is invariably subject when the owner wishes to part with it. There are some touches from the life in the following picture : “ You bear up tolerably well at being told that it is a pity he is not gray, or black, or bay, or roan; that the purchaser bates 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 tail 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 fore legs 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 that heel for you/ “ ‘ What’s this here ?—capped hock—ah! and a threat of blood-spavin, too. That’s fliwßfh for me/ ““Aie you rare his wind is all right?’ reka a third. T thought he flanked a good deal after that caster. Would you ? -•.v..' .i." '

mind letting y.ror servant give him a sharp gallop ? has he carried a lady 7 will be run leader? how does he jump limber?’ are ail poured In {upon you by people who have no thought of a deal; > and once more come in the ilnubts upon ‘ that eye, or that tendon, or that frog.’ Now, with a fall conviction of your beast's soundness, and a thorough belief in your critic’s igno ranee, these suspicions are so many insults to your understanding, and wounds to your pride. Had there been no questions of sale, you would have resented those impertinences as personal injuries. The converse of ‘ Love me, love my dog’ is, ‘Abure my horse, abuso me.’ “ Last of all comes the fellow who walks around your beast with his eyes 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 these disparagements is to knock something off tbe price; that in every censure of your beast’s ears or mane, or tail, there la the question of a ten-pound note, tbe insolence is not dlmish ed by that consciousness. Yon Arrive at last at the fact, that where money cMpes in courtesy goes out, and that he who has to dispose of anything, eaters the field as a dealer, and must look for no other civilities than such as’ arc common with his craft “Where a man’s love for his horse has Become a sort of family ass( clion; 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 ai thohgh I was setting up for sale, n't onlv the strong thews and smews that had served me, hut the sterling qualities of temper, courage and endurance; the brave intrepidi’y 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 iny will, even when that will had been little better than a caprice, if not half a cruelty.