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Subj:.....Butcher
Boy (S636)
From the book
"Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd"
Edited by Martin Gardner
From: Dover Publications in 1959 |
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Photo fromStarving-Artistt |
President
Grant bought and later sold a wonderful
horse
named "Butcher Boy". Your straightforward
problem
is to determing the selling price of
"Butcher
Boy" and a second horse.
My story turns upon
an incident told by Ike Reed, of the old
horse mart of Johnson
& Reed. During the last term of his
Presidency General
Grant returned from his afternoon drive
and in a humorous
but somewhat mortified way told Colonel
Shadwick, who kept
the Willard Hotel, that he had been passed
on the road by a
butcher cart in a way that made his crack
team appear to be
standing still. He said he would like to
know who owned the
horse and if it was for sale.
The horse was readily
found and purchased from an unsophis-
ticated German for
half of what he would have asked had he
known the purchaser
was the President of the United States.
The horse was of
light color and none other than Grant's
favorite horse, "Butcher
Boy," named after the incident
mentioned.
Well, some years later,
after the Wall street catastrophe
which impaired the
finances of the Grant family, Butcher
Boy and his mate
were sent to the auction rooms of Johnson
& Reed, and sold
for the sum of $493.68. Mr. Reed said he
could have gotten
twice as much for them if he had been
permitted to mention
their ownership, but General Grant
positively prohibited
the fact being made known. "Never-
theless," said Reed,
you come out two percent ahead, for
you made 12 percent
on Butcher Boy and lose 10 percent on
the other."
"I suppose that is
the way some people would figure it out,"
replied the General,
but the way he laughed showed that he
was better at figures
than some people, so I am going to
ask our puzzlists
to tell me what he got for each hoses if
he lost 10 percent
on one and made 12 percent on the other,
but cleared 2 percent
on the whole transaction. |
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