race. 



Prefc 



some years of my pupilage in London, after leaving school, I 

 lunched every day at the Castle Tavern in Holborn (now 

 the Napier Restaurant), which was kept by <' Tom Spring," 

 the ex-champion of England, who was one of Nature's 

 gentlemen. It was a very respectable place, and answered 

 to what is now called a " Luncheon Bar." So I set my 

 memory to work, and reproduced all that I could remember 

 of numberless conversations with Tom Spring, under the 

 name of " Tom Spring's Back Parlour "—which appears in 

 these pages, and which has not been hitherto reproduced. Mr. 

 Baily, for whose memory I have a great respect, and myself, 

 so to say, " put our horses together," and he gave me a 

 carte Uanclie to write what I pleased connected with English 

 sports and sketches of country and town life, and I availed 

 myself largely of his offer, so much so that a considerable 

 portion of this volume consists of a selection from my articles 

 which appeared in Baily's magazine. In fact, the excep- 

 tions are four papers only, namely, '' Boxing and Athletics " 

 and " My First Salmon," which come from a now extinct 

 weekly paper styled AsUre or Afloat; "The Racing 

 Stable," from Vanity Fair; and "Betting and Gambling," 

 from Sporting and Dramatic. I take this opportunity of 

 tendering my sincere thanks to Mr. Baily, who reigns in his 

 late father's stead, for allowing me to reproduce my former 

 writings. I thought it better to leave the sketches just as 

 they were written, as, for what they are worth, they are 

 mostly reminiscences of happy memories, and are all drawn 

 from the life. People who call those of my school laudatores 

 temporis acti, will find, when the time comes that they 

 cannot shut their eyes to the fact that the shades of early 

 evening are closing over them, that the greatest pleasure 



