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Updated: June 21, 2025
Arthur Ritchie, Bithnie, a cattle-dealer from Aberdeen, used to tell the following story: In a bad Hallow Fair, towards sunsetting, a gentleman came round and asked the price of a lot of cattle. Arthur had given him a large halter, and he got an offer which he accepted. It was a great price for the market. The buyer refused afterwards to take them, and my father was made umpire.
He had been a great cattle-dealer in the United States, and boasted that he had helped to break the United States Bank, by being indebted to it five million dollars!
'And do you never give him a lift? 'Never! roared the cattle-dealer, laughing like an ogre. The dog being now ten years old, I was not surprised to hear that he sometimes tried to lose himself just before his master was starting upon a long round.
Remember me to your husband and tell him, his life may be valuable; but ours are not wisps of straw." "Tell him, too," cried a cattle-dealer, who did not yet seem to have been specially injured by the general distress, "tell him oxen can be slaughtered, the more the better; but Leyden citizens "
Wickersham and his friends awakened to the fact that Squire Rawson was not the simple cattle-dealer he appeared to be, but was a man to be reckoned with. He not only held a large amount of the most valuable property in the Gap, but had as yet proved wholly intractable about disposing of it. Accordingly, the agent of Wickersham & Company, Mr. Halbrook, came down to Gumbolt to look into the matter.
He therefore explained fully to Mr Strelley what were his wishes with regard to becoming a cattle-dealer and drover. "If you really have made up your mind on the subject, I will most gladly forward your views," said Mr Strelley. "You know my trusty old head drover, Will Brinsmead, as you took an excursion with him last year, I rather think.
"Say," he whispered to him hastily, "as soon as the curtain drops, go to the giant with the long beard, who sits in the orchestra-stall yonder, and whose words amused the audience just now. He is a cattle-dealer from Hungary, and I must see him at once. Just whisper in his ear that his countryman with the wine and horses has arrived, and it is necessary he should come and see him right away.
One of them was a rough-looking youth, tall, with fair moustache; the other a stupid fellow, of ordinary appearance, with dyed moustache, shirt-front and fingers sparkling with diamonds; the third was a knave with, cheek-whiskers, half gipsy and half cattle-dealer, with every ear mark of the most dangerous mountebank.
John Thom of Uras, Stonehaven, was also one of the firm that lost heavily, and has always, to his credit, paid 20s. in the pound. It was a saying of an old friend of mine that no great breeder or great cattle-dealer ever died rich; and this has held good in the great majority of cases. John Elliot and William Brown bought largely of our Aberdeen cattle, and attended Aikey Fair as well as Falkirk.
"Well, I didn't say I'd lend it to you," he said; "but, maybe, I'll do it if 'twill help the General. Investin' in a young man is kind of hazardous; it's like puttin' your money in a harry-dick you don't know what he's goin' to be. All you has to go on is the frame and your jedgment." Fortunately for Keith, the old cattle-dealer had a good opinion of his "jedgment."
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