For pups from two to three months old, from fifty to seventy-five dollars.  When six months old, from seventy-five to a hundred:  From six months to maturity, from one hundred to two hundred.  These prices are, of course, for the ordinary all-around good dogs.  With dogs that approximate perfection, and which only come in the same proportion as giants and dwarfs do in the human race (I believe the proportion is one in five thousand), and the advent of which would surprise the average kennel man as much as if the President had sent him a special invitation to dine with him at the White House, the price is problematical, and is negotiated solely by the demand for such a wonder by a comparatively few buyers.

I think Boston terriers as a breed occupy the same position amongst dogs as the hunter and carriage horse does amongst horses.  Each are more or less a luxury.  A well matched pair of horses of good all-round action, of desirable color and perfect manners and suitable age will sell in the Eastern cities (I am not sufficiently acquainted with the other sections of the country to know values there) at from eight hundred to two thousand dollars, but with a pair of carriage horses able to win on the tan bark, the price will be regulated by the comparatively few people who have sufficient money to spare to purchase this fashionable luxury, and ten times the amount paid for the first mentioned pair would be a reasonable price to pay for the prize winners.  I think the winners of the blue in the Bostons would fetch a relative sum.

The important factor of the cost of production in the case of the dog necessarily enters into the selling price.  Good Bostons are as hard to raise as first class hunters, and a correspondingly large sum has to be obtained to meet expenses, to say nothing of profit, but in the writer’s experience the best dog or horse sells the readiest.  Do not be misled by the remark “that a dog is worth all he will bring.”  Generally speaking, this is sound logic, but not always.  Many dogs have been sold for very little by people not cognizant of their value, but this in no way changed the intrinsic worth of the dog.  On the other hand, many dogs have been disposed of at many times their real value, but this transaction did not enhance their worth in the slightest degree.  A gold dollar is worth one hundred cents whether changed for fifty cents or five hundred.  An article of intrinsic value never changes.  Our advice to all who have dogs for sale (or any other article, in fact), ask what you know is a good, honest, fair value, and although you may not sell the dog today, remember that there are other days to follow.  What I am going to add now I know a great many dealers and breeders will laugh at and declare me a fit subject for an alienist to work on, but it is fundamentally true just the same, and is this:  Never ask or take for a dog more than you know (not guess) the dog is worth.  This is nothing but ordinary, common everyday justice that every man has every right to demand of his fellow man, and every man that is a gentleman will recognize the truth and force of.