e of the pony-horse's fore-legs, would respond,
with an upward glance of searching inquiry at my friend, "Well, he's a
leetle mite tender for'a'd."

I am afraid my friend grew to have a cruel pleasure in forcing them to
this exposure of the truth; but he excused himself upon the ground that
they never expected him to be alarmed at this tenderness forward, and
that their truth was not a tribute to virtue, but was contempt of his
ignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth; and he felt that it must be his
part thereafter to confute the common belief that there is no truth in
horse-trades.

These people were not usually the owners of the horses they brought, but
the emissaries or agents of the owners. Often they came merely to show a
horse, and were not at all sure that his owner would part with him on
any terms, as he was a favorite with the ladies of the family. An
impenetrable mystery hung about the owner, through which he sometimes
dimly loomed as a gentleman in failing health, who had to give up his
daily drives, and had no use for the horse. There were cases in which
the dealer came secretly, from pure zeal, to show a horse whose owner
supposed him still in the stable, and who must be taken back before his
absence was noticed. If my friend insisted upon knowing the owner and
conferring with him, in any of these instances, it was darkly admitted
that he was a gentleman in the livery business over in Somerville or
down in the Lower Port. Truth, it seemed, might be absent or present in
a horse-trade, but mystery was essential.

The dealers had a jargon of their own, in which my friend became an
expert. They did not say that a horse weighed a thousand pounds, but ten
hundred; he was not worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars, but one and
a quarter; he was not going on seven years old, but was coming seven.
There are curious facts, by the way, in regard to the age of horses
which are not generally known. A horse is never of an even age: that is,
he is not six, or eight, or ten, but five, or seven, or nine years old;
he is sometimes, but not often, eleven; he is _never_ thirteen; his
favorite time of life is seven, and he rarely gets beyond it, if on
sale. My friend found the number of horses brought into the world in
1871 quite beyond computation.

He also found that most hard-working horses were sick or ailing, as most
hard-working men and women are; that perfectly sound horses are as rare
as perfectly sound human beings,