The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1892-01-22
SORRY OLD HORSES.
A VISIT TOA PLACE WHERE WORM
OUT EQUlNES ARE SOLD.

Creatures, Long Past Being Useful,
scared.by Whipping Into Market Form
and Sold at Prices Ranging from Four
to Twenty-Five Dollars-Pitiable Sights.
TWENTY-FIVE dollars for boss an har
Mss" shouted the man in the sulky, who
was driving "skinpoor' black gelding
about the great dusty field, stopping in
front of the little knots Of men which were
here and there in the outskirts.
Now, it may seem incredible that a real
live horse and harness fit to hitch him to
a wagon should be sold for SO little as
twenty-five dollars, but the evidence that
it is done is plentiful twice week at the
horse fair out at the end of Halsey street,
Brooklyn. And that is not the worst of it.
Many a horse is sold at that fair, vivid de
harniss trowed in," for considerably less
than twenty-five dollars. A man who
looked as though he might be intermit-
tently truthful told b. reporter the other
day that week before he had bought
pair of horses for fourteen dollars.
He further said, 81 seen boss sold here
one day for twelve shillin."
Just think of thatl A horse that could
stand, walk, eat spoon vittles'' and draw
light load going for the ridiculously
could almost afford to give such u horse as
that away with every pound of his fifty
cent tea.
This Halsey street horse fair is a great
institution. 1t has been holding Mondays
and Thursdays for the last eight years on
q vacant block Of ground just opposite the
Putnam avenue stables. It started in an
informal way and it has existed without
rules or regulations ever since. Somebody
owns the land who will one day order the
Jockeys to move off, but who the owner is
from whom the eviction order will come
sooner or later not even those traders who
have attended the fair regularly from the
first day to now have the faintest idea.
PIrIABLB SPECIMENS.
A rapid walk about the ground inspires
In the humane man the strongest sort Of
desire to buy every one of the poor beasts
which he sees and emancipate him, SO that
he may spend the rest of his days in clover.
Poor. lame, halt, blind, wheezy, tired
Things, it makes decent mans blood boil
Ito see them led and driven about, under
going constant lashings from the brutal
fellows who own them, their shaky nerves
wrought upon by continuous terrorizing.
"He'd fall down, surer'n guns, If he
wasn't licked" said young man to the
reporter, who had asked him what he
thought of the conduct of great hulk OF
jockey who about every other minute set
thin, SCARED old chestnut horse to dane
ing by cracking him over the ears. The
horse had been stifled and foundered and
looked as weak as man convalescing from
pneumonia.
1.-THE whips the biggest pant Of the bust
ness on these grounds" unused the young
t. hot
the most that gets along best here.
''There's boss over there to the fence,
though, that nobody Twin could scare" re-
sumed the young man. Come and take q
peep at him."
The horse in question was strawberry
roam, which looked more like horses skin
thrown over a clotheshorse than like a
flesh and blood thing. He was such a pitt
able creaturel
"Say," said the young man, ''if a man
should go up to that old fellow and put a
pistol to his head, Pll bet yer the boss
would open his mouth afore he died and
sing out, Much obleeged.' It's enough to
make body cry to look at him."
Just about as miserable creature was
the horse hitched alongside the roam. He
had milk leg on him half as big around as
flour barrel, but that was the only plump
thing that he could boast of. The few
whole pieces of hide left on him indicated
that he had once been black. He was just
about to lie down when his owner came
up, and 'twixt yells and whip cuts scared
him into such frame of mind that he
actually recalled the time ten, fifteen, it
might have been twenty, years ago, when
he ran away with the milk cart or the
family carryall; whichever it was he didn't