Buying a Horse

'Buying a Horse' is an essay sharing several anecdotes on buying horses by William Dean Howells. He begins by saying that if one has enough money, there seems no reason why one should not go and buy such a horse as he wants. A friend of his proceeded to do so: He was about removing from Charlesbridge, where he had lived many happy years without a horse, farther into the country, where there were charming drives and inconvenient distances, and where a horse would be very desirable, if not quite necessary. But as a horse seemed at first an extravagant if not sinful desire, he began by talking vaguely round, and rather hinting than declaring that he thought somewhat of buying. The professor to whom he first intimated his purpose flung himself from his horse's back to the grassy border of the sidewalk where my friend stood, and said he would give him a few points. «In the first place don't buy a horse that shows much daylight under him, unless you buy a horse-doctor with him; get a short-legged horse; and he ought to be short and thick in the barrel,»—or words to that effect. «Don't get a horse with a narrow forehead: there are horse-fools as well as the other kind, and you want a horse with room for brains. And look out that he's all right forward.»