Horse Trading

There was once in old New England a brand of man called, among other names, a horse trader. By promising anything, eve his homespun shirt, and never paying, he reaped great profits from unsuspecting children and old women. After a while, most people began to think that the horse traders were pulling their legs. The traders, sensing this, decided that there was strength in numbers, and so seven of them banded together.

Their first venture as a group was to buy a winged white elephant, and their second was to sell it. They bargained with four boys who owned an old but very respected horse called One to Four, because he was owned by four. They told the boys that they would swap their much publicized horse, Eight to Eleven, for One to four. The deal was completed. it was hard for the boys to say goodbye to old One to Four, but they were sure that Eight to Eleven was a horse of a better color.

Imagine the boys' surprise when they found that their new horse was a white elephant! But he was a very nice young elephant, so they decided to train him. Before they could even try though, he gave one flap of his mighty white wings, and flew off into the sun, back to his seven masters.

The boys were very angry and very frustrated. But the masters laughed gleefully in their respective houses. They not only had One to Four, but Eight to Eleven, whom they could trade over and over again.

Of course the boys wanted either the elephant or the horse back, so they went to see spokesman for the horse traders. All he said was, "We never thought about it, because we never considered this a horse trade in the first place." The boys sadly agreed because they all knew very well that trading an elephant for a horse was not strictly a horse trade.