listening to the chaffering of the buyers and sellers, and occasionally
putting in a word of my own, which was not always received with much
deference; suddenly, however, on a whisper arising that I was the young
cove who had brought the wonderful horse to the fair which Jack Dale had
bought for the foreigneering man, I found myself an object of the
greatest attention; those who had before replied with stuff! and
nonsense! to what I said, now listened with the greatest eagerness to any
nonsense which I chose to utter, and I did not fail to utter a great
deal; presently, however, becoming disgusted with the beings about me, I
forced my way, not very civilly, through my crowd of admirers; and
passing through an alley and a back street, at last reached an outskirt
of the fair where no person appeared to know me. Here I stood, looking
vacantly on what was going on, musing on the strange infatuation of my
species, who judge of a person's words, not from their intrinsic merit,
but from the opinion--generally an erroneous one--which they have formed
of the person. From this reverie I was roused by certain words which
sounded near me, uttered in a strange tone, and in a strange cadence--the
words were, 'them that finds, wins; and them that can't finds, loses.'
Turning my eyes in the direction from which the words proceeded, I saw
six or seven people, apparently all countrymen, gathered round a person
standing behind a tall white table of very small compass. 'What,' said
I, 'the thimble-engro of --- Fair here at Horncastle.' Advancing nearer,
however, I perceived that though the present person was a thimble-engro,
{288a} he was a very different one from my old acquaintance of --- Fair.
{288b} The present one was a fellow about half-a-foot taller than the
other. He had a long, haggard, wild face, and was dressed in a kind of
jacket, something like that of a soldier, with dirty hempen trousers, and
with a foreign-looking peaked hat on his head. He spoke with an accent
evidently Irish, and occasionally changed the usual thimble formula into
'them that finds wins, and them that can't--och sure!--they loses;'
saying also frequently 'your honour' instead of 'my lord.' I observed,
on drawing nearer, that he handled the pea and thimble with some
awkwardness, like that which might be expected from a novice in the
trade. He contrived, however, to win several shillings, for he did not
seem to play for gold, from 'their honours.' Aw