An Old Acquaintance

Leaving the church, I strolled through the fair, looking at the horses, listening to the chaffering of the buyers and sellers, and occasionally putting in a word of my own, which was not always received with much deference¹; suddenly, however, on a whisper arising that I was the young cove² who had brought the wonderful horse to the fair which Jack³ Dale had bought for the foreigneering man, I found myself an object of the greatest attention; those who had before replied with stuff! and nonsense! to what I said, now listened with the greatest eagerness to any nonsense which I chose to utter, and I did not fail to utter a great deal; presently, however, becoming disgusted with the beings about me, I forced my way, not very civilly, through my crowd of admirers; and passing through an alley⁴ and a back street, at last reached an outskirt of the fair where no person appeared to know me. Here I stood, looking vacantly on what was going on, musing⁵ on the strange infatuation of my species, who judge of a person’s words, not from their intrinsic merit, but from the opinion — generally an erroneous one — which they have formed of the person. From this reverie I was roused by certain words which sounded near me, uttered in a strange tone, and in a strange cadence⁶ — the words were, ‘them that finds, wins; and them that can’t finds, loses.’ Turning my eyes in the direction from which the words proceeded, I saw six or seven people, apparently⁷ all countrymen, gathered round a person standing⁸ behind a tall white table of very small compass. ‘What,’ said I, ‘the thimble-engro of —— Fair here at Horncastle.’ Advancing nearer, however, I perceived that though the present person was a thimble-engro, 173 he was a very different one from my old acquaintance of —— Fair. 174 The present one was a fellow about half-a-foot taller than the other. He had a long, haggard, wild face, and was dressed in a kind of jacket, something like that of a soldier, with dirty

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