NEWMARKET IN THE OLDEN TIME. 93 



monuments, he gave Sam lesson after lesson in race- 

 riding, from the moment he dared trust him on a 

 pony alone. To leave the whip and bit, which he 

 had handled so long and so worthily, in the hands 

 of another S. CHIFNEY of his own teaching, was the 

 great wish of his heart. Hence, as if with a melan- 

 choly foreboding that his child would soon be called 

 to take his own place on the Prince's horses, he used 

 to slip off with him into the stables when he was 

 barely three stone, and after putting a racing saddle 

 on to Kit Karr, Silver, Sober .Robin, or Magic, show 

 him by the hour how to sit and hold his reins. 

 Aided by lessons of this nature, and constant prac- 

 tice twice a day in the gallops, Will had already be- 

 come a very expert horseman; and while he was with 

 the string at exercise, his father and Sam, one on his 

 Heath hack, and the other on a pony, would mark 

 out a 300 yards course under the cover of the fir 

 clump on the Warren Hill, and run twelve or thir- 

 teen races in an afternoon. Every phase of finishing 

 was compressed into the lesson. Sam would make 

 the running ; and then his father would get to his 

 girths, take a pull, and initiate him into the mysteries 

 of a set-to. These tactics would then be reversed, 

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

 last stride, or to nurse his pony and come with a tre- 

 mendous rush. The rush did not, however, super- 

 sede the favourite slack-rein system, at which both the 

 boys practised with the most intense perseverance. 

 Sam almost lived on his pony; and poor Dennis Fitz- 

 patrick, who died in his forty-second year, from a cold 

 caught in wasting, only six months before Chifney 

 senior, used to look jokingly forward to the days when 

 the father and son would challenge him right and left 

 at the winning chair. "By the Powers, it's not fair 

 anyhow,' 3 he used to say, as he cantered past them 

 when they were at this game ; " Buckle and I will be 

 having Sam and SAM-SON clown on its soon. 1 ' 



