AN AMUSING HORSE DEAL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 93, 1 April 1911, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN AMUSING HORSE DEAL.

Some twenty years ago a certain foreign nobleman, hailing from the gay city of the Gaul, came to England in search of a pair of exceptionally firatclass dappled-grev phaeton horses, wrr-li extravagant action, and which as he described, “must match like two little drops of peas.” He had evidently go; a little mixed in his metaphor as regards the similarity of peas and falling drops from a crystal fountain. However, it was sufficiently clear that he desired them to bear such a resemblance that- you couldn’t tell “t’other from which.” Now to find even one horse of the exact colour he required with all the accompanying qualities would be difficult enough, but to find a pair was like looking for a five-legged sheep. In the pursuit of his quest, says the "English Illustrated Magazine, this industrious but exacting nobleman left no stone unturned, and in relation visited again and again nearly every horse dealer and repository in England. To a certain large dealer in_ the Midlands he was so constant a visitor th&i the lamentations of his ungratified requirements became almost' a ni usance, although those magic and oft-repeatcxi words, "price no object whatever, nwoke periodical sentiments of hope and regre<t in the mind of this equine provider. At last he called one day on the dealers in question and with much jubilation informed him that at last he had found tho very horse to suit his requirements in every possible particular, and chat his task, being now half accomplished, every effort must he made and no expense spared to find Xdie match, no matter what the cosfr might be. He then incidentally mentioned where, in Yorkshire, he had discovered this grand and gallant grey, the owiier thereof, oddly enough, happening to be well known to the party addressed. An idea at once possessed the brain of this very resourceful dealer, and ha said—" Well, ill's very serious; but my buyer in Wales writes me he hSs - bought a very beautiful grey horse in Pembrokeshire, and from what he says I should not be at all surprised if he would match the one you have seen. However, come here on Saturday morning, and you can judge for yourself . ’ The mail train that very night bore our Midland merchant to the wilds of Yorkshire, and the next morning a leaf from his cheque-book was exchanged for a beautiful grey horse, whose change of domicile to the Midland counties was speedily effected. Brief was his sojourn there before he ; was relieved of about a foot and a half of tail and as much hair from his mane as would stuff an ordinary mattress, the effect! of which operation rendered him almost beyond recognition. Saturday arrived, and with is the Frenchman, who was much pleased with the horse, although, as he said, it was rather taller and stronger than the one in Yorkshire. Still he could never in His wildest hopes ever expect to match perfectly the one he had seen; it would be striving for the unattainable. He would, however, buy this one as a makeshift until he could find something fatter, for he had already wasted two months in the search.

The price, a very high one, was agreed upon, the money paid, and Bradshaw hastily consulted as to how soon rhe anxious purchaser could secure the apple of his eye. I may mention here that it is .perfectly marvellous how the acquisition o.- loss of tail altera Mie appearance of a horse; it changes the character completely. I remember at the time of the preseirt Czar’s Coronation in St. Petersburg that nearly all the black horses which took part'in the ceremony, and caused such a sensation, and most. of which went from Paris, wore false "tails. In fact, two hundred false tails were sent to St. Petersburg for the procession

Words were incapable, so I believe, <to express the disappointment of tho unfortunate Frenchman when he learnt that the horse, upon which he had set his heart, was sold within one hour of his leaving him and gone somewhere abroad, believed to lie Russia. There was no help for it, and fa had to return to France with the short-tailed horse he purchased, vowing by all that was holy riiat he was not a patch on the one that he had lovod and lost.