'A SPRAT TO CATCH A MACKEREL ' 13 



usual committed no error in judgment ; for he recouped 

 himself the outlay, and a considerable sum besides, in 

 winning the Handicap in the Second October Meeting 

 over the Cesarewitch course no great time after. But 

 with The Crossfire Colt or Alvediston it was a very different 

 thing. Here Mr. Padwick took my word, and believed 

 him to be what I thought and said he was ; and he was 

 not disappointed. For after winning, as before related, 

 the New Stakes at Ascot and a Stake at Stockbridge, he 

 refused 6,500 a sum I strongly recommended him to 

 take, as I thought the horse was too furnished and small 

 to improve much with age. Mr. Padwick, however, 

 would not take less than 7,000. On the second day he 

 ran a dead-heat with Mr. Merry's Costa, which stake was 

 divided, and was then sold for a very much less sum and 

 left me only winning once at Goodwood after and 

 finished his career ingloriously by being beaten, as an 

 aged gelding, in a Selling race, winner to be sold for 20. 



Whether or not Mr. Padwick thought, to use an in- 

 elegant but apt illustration, I had ' set a sprat to catch a 

 mackerel,' and sold him a horse for 1,000, knowing him 

 to be worth 5,000 at the time, in the vain hope of 

 inducing him to give that sum or more for one not worth 

 a guinea, and conceived me to be as well versed as him- 

 self in an art in which he was so eminently proficient, I 

 am not prepared to say. But as he never bought another 

 of me, I presume he was not well pleased with his medi- 

 tations on the subject, and thought himself deceived. 

 However, we always remained friends, in the common 

 acceptation of the word. 



This easy assumption by Mr. Padwick that deception 

 of any kind was practised in the matter, irresistibly 

 brings to mind the story of the astute young gentleman 

 who, having freely anticipated his fortune, applied to a 



