Nor must one suppose, because the horse was an inconspicuous part of
the show, that he was therefore an inexpensive part. One man was to
be seen here driving a four-in-hand of black stallions which had
cost forty thousand; there were other men who drove only one horse,
and had paid forty thousand for that. Half a million was a moderate
estimate of the cost of the "string" which some would exhibit. And
of course these horses were useless, save for show purposes, and to
breed other horses like them. Many of them never went out of their
stables except for exercise upon a track; and the cumbrous and
enormous; expensive coaches were never by any possibility used
elsewhere--when they were taken from place to place they seldom went
upon their own wheels.

And there were people here who made their chief occupation in life
the winning of blue ribbons at these shows. They kept great country
estates especially for the horses, and had private indoor exhibition
rings. Robbie Walling and Chauncey Venable were both such people; in
the summer of next year another of the Wallings took a string across
the water to teach the horse-show game to Society in London. He took
twenty or thirty horses, under the charge of an expert manager and a
dozen assistants; he sent sixteen different kinds of carriages, and
two great coaches, and a ton of harness and other stuff. It required
one whole deck of a steamer, and the expedition enabled him to get
rid of six hundred thousand dollars.

All through the day, of course, Robbie was down in the ring with his
trainers and his competitors, and Montague sat and kept his wife
company. There was a steady stream of visitors, who came to
congratulate her upon their successes, and to commiserate with Mrs.
Chauncey Venable over the sufferings of the un-happy victim of a