44 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER 



' When moderately reduced, through exercise 

 taken in a suit of proper sweaters — say eight, or at 

 most ten, miles' hrisk walk — repeated for two or 

 three days, nothing can exceed the delicious sensation 

 of health and elasticity which comes over a man, 

 after being rubbed down with a coarse towel and 

 fresh clothed for the remainder of the day. The 

 effect is visible on the skin, w^hich assumes a remark- 

 ably transparent hue, whilst after a repetition of such 

 regimen condition follows every sweat, till the jockey 

 becomes as sleek as the animal he is going to ride. 



' There was, I mind, a favourite sweating-ground 

 with the Newmarket jocks, of about four miles out, 

 kept by a " Mother Onion," or some such name, 

 whither a whole brigade of antique-visaged little 

 gentlemen, carrying as much clothing as would 

 suffice for many much taller personages, might be 

 seen bathed in perspiration, either swinging their 

 arms to-and-fro to increase the muscular action, and 

 tramping after each other in single file on the foot- 

 path bordering the high-road, or else encountered 

 over the public-house fire, scraping the perspiration 

 from their heads and faces with a horn carried for 

 the purpose, precisely as a race-horse is scraped after 

 a race. After resting thus for half an hour or so, 

 and imbibinof a tumbler of warm beverao^e to increase 

 the sweat, they return at a good pace to Newmarket, 

 perhaps to turn in for a short time and lie loaded 

 with blankets, in addition to their load of sweaters. 



