UPON JOCKEYS. 



227 



would get to his girths, take a pull, and initiate him into the 

 mysteries of a set-to. The tactics would then be reversed, and 

 Sam taught to get up and win by a head in the last stride, and to 

 nurse his pony and come with a tremendous rush, which, however, 

 did not supersede the favourite slack-rein system. Sam almost 

 lived on his pony, and Dennis Fitzpatrick, who died in his forty- 

 second year, used to look forward to the 

 day when the father and son would 

 challenge him right and left at the 

 winning chair. ( By the powers,' 

 he used to say, as he 

 cantered by them 

 when engaged 



; " ^^^^ !i ^ i ^i^ : r^^ 



'H5&--. 



Paternal instruction. 



at this game, ' it's not fair ; Buckle and I will be having old Sam 

 and Sam's son down on us soon.' 



Yet with all their artifice and resource in the saddle, no one 

 acquainted with their lives and deaths would care to set the 

 two Chifneys up on high as examples worthy of imitation by 

 their successors. The father died, as we have recorded in the 

 previous chapter, at the age of fifty- two in the debtors' ward of 

 the Fleet prison. The son, who, together with his trainer- 

 brother, Will, had sat as a boy upon the Prince Regent's knee, 

 and received a guinea from his royal hand, was far from 

 meriting the character given to his rival and contemporary, of 

 whom it was said that the sun might as easily be turned 



Q 2 



