It's a good thing to have a
gift, but yet better to have two. I might have got a very decent
livelihood by throwing stones, but I much question whether I should
ever have attained to the position in society which I now occupy,
but for my knowledge of animals. I lived very comfortably with the
old gentleman till he died, which he did in about a fortnight after
he had laid his old lady in the ground. Having no children, he
left me what should remain after he had been buried decently, and
the remainder was six dickeys and thirty shillings in silver. I
remained in the dickey trade ten years, during which time I saved a
hundred pounds. I then embarked in the horse line. One day, being
in the--market on a Saturday, I saw Mary Fulcher with a halter
round her neck, led about by a man, who offered to sell her for
eighteen-pence. I took out the money forthwith and bought her; the
man was her husband, a basket-maker, with whom she had lived
several years without having any children; he was a drunken,
quarrel-some fellow, and having had a dispute with her the day
before, he determined to get rid of her, by putting a halter round
her neck and leading her to the cattle-market, as if she were a
mare, which he had, it seems, a right to do;--all women being
considered mares by old English law, and, indeed, still called
mares in certain counties, where genuine old English is still
preserved.
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