TRAINERS AND JOCKEYS. 43 



have taken care that he should not lack an annuity 

 or the joint lives of himself and his wife. 



Jockeys generally increase about two stone, or a 

 stone-and-a-half, in the winter ; but with medicine 

 and vigorous wasting, they can come to their weight 

 again, without fever, in three weeks. They have 

 been known during the summer to get off 7 lbs, or 

 even more on an emergency, in twenty-four hours, and 

 Nat is said to have managed 4Jlbs. for Vulcan in two ! 

 If they are at all weak from illness, they will lose much 

 more in their "walks" than they have calculated on ; 

 and we remember seeing one of them bring a 3 Ib. 

 saddle to the weighing-house, and have to borrow a 

 5 Ib. one from this cause. The old generation of 

 jockeys were, taking them throughout, taller and 

 larger-boned than the present ; and as some of the 

 weights in many of the great races were much lower, 

 the wasting process was still more severe. It was 

 a piteous spectacle to see Sam Chifney, who always 

 went to work after every one else, stepping with his 

 ears down, and a grim perspiring visage, along the 

 Dullingham-road, and boiling himself by ounces to 

 8st. 21b. for an Ascot Cup mount. Poor Frank 

 Butler did not look one whit more happy on these 

 occasions, and wasting even to 8st. 71bs. was the 

 very curse of the latter ten years of his jockey life, 

 though out of compliment to Scott and Songstress 

 he drew 8st. 41bs. at the last Ascot Meeting he ever 

 attended. The weather is most favourable, and as 

 time also hangs rather heavily on their hands in 

 those Berkshire villages, jockeys ride their very low- 

 est weights at Ascot, and look like him, as if they had 

 been quite determined " to take off their flesh and sit 

 in their bones." William Scott doing his last mile up 

 the North-road elm avenue on a St. Leger morning, 

 with a sprig of heather he had gathered near Eossing- 

 ton Bridge jauntily stuck in his wide-awake, and his 

 merry joke and nod to his friends as he swung past 



