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.  That same afternoon, the man who had been her husband, having got drunk in a public-house, with the money which he had received for her, quarrelled with another man, and receiving a blow under the ear, fell upon the floor, and died of artiflex; and in less than three weeks I was married to Mary Fulcher, by virtue of regular bans.  I am told she was legally my property by virtue of my having bought her with a halter round her neck; but, to tell you the truth, I think everybody should live by his trade, and I didn’t wish to act shabbily towards our parson, who is a good fellow, and has certainly a right to his fees.  A better wife than Mary Fulcher—­I mean Mary Dale—­no one ever had; she has borne me several children, and has at all times shown a willingness to oblige me, and to be my faithful wife.  Amongst other things, I begged her to have done with her family, and I believe she has never spoken to them since.

“I have thriven very well in business, and my name is up as being a person who can be depended on, when folks treats me handsomely.  I always make a point when a gentleman comes to me, and says, ’Mr. Dale,’ or ‘John,’ for I have no objection to be called John by a gentleman—­’I wants a good horse, and am ready to pay a good price’—­I always makes a point, I say, to furnish him with an animal worth the money; but when I sees a fellow, whether he calls himself gentleman or not, wishing to circumvent me, what does I do?  I doesn’t quarrel with him; not I; but, letting him imagine he is taking me in, I contrives to sell him a screw for thirty pounds, not worth thirty shillings.  All honest respectable people have at present great confidence in me, and frequently commissions me to buy them horses at great fairs like this.