The Merry Past 



meetings the peasantry assembled in crowds, and 

 generally had a favourite, into whose cause they 

 entered heart and hand; any other competitor proving 

 victorious stood a good chance of being stoned to 

 death in the hour of victory, for these active parti- 

 sans stuck at nothing, and were no respecters of 

 persons. Mr. Smith and Fidler were strangers, there- 

 fore they were not to v/in, if there was any virtue in 

 stones. But Mr. Smith knew Fidler could win, was 

 determined he should ; and he did win cleverly by a 

 very shrewd stratagem. In giving Fidler his brushing 

 gallop immediately previous to starting his rider 

 wore his jockey dress, but contrived, just before the 

 actual start, to slip on a hat and great-coat. From 

 the very start Mr. Smith took a determined and 

 decided lead, and kept it all through. At the various 

 fences, where bands of brutes were stationed, stone 

 in hand, he called out that the favourite was winning, 

 described him by name, and called on them to clear 

 the course. This they did, taking him for some 

 hard-riding partisan : thus did this clever rider save 

 his horse and himself from being maimed or killed, 

 and won his race. 



Ireland was the very head-quarters of originality, 

 a conspicuous example having been Mr. Fitzgerald 

 Caldwell, a gentleman who had had a very varied 

 career. Born a younger son of an old family, at a 

 time when education and refinement were less thought 

 of than boisterous conviviality, Mr. Caldwell passed 

 much of his early life at sea ; but by nature attached 

 to horses, on marrying a widow lady of title, with a 

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