348 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



people. My word ! I could set a good many of them 

 then ! I'll tell you a story about a bull a regular 

 good'un. Ecod, how you make me laugh ! I wish 

 I was twenty years younger. It would be about a 

 year and a-half before I left Cottesmore there was 

 a holiday-making, and this ere bull was in a field. 

 Some one said " You daren't ride him, Dick f so up 

 I gets off he goes, right away to Cottesmore, and 

 the whole fair after me ! You know the brook there ? 

 Well, he was so beat that he downs his head when he 

 gets to it, and slithers me right off. Flat on my 

 back I comes: on him again, and blame me if I 

 didn't ride him whiles he was so blown he could run 

 no longer ! If s truth, every word I'm telling you. 

 There was quite a hunt after the bull, and the far- 

 mer laughed and said nothing : he know'd me, you 

 see, already, and my riding tricks I was a queer-' un. 

 I would be somewhere about twelve and a-half 

 when I went to Sir Horace Mann's racing stables : 

 they were at Barham Downs in Kent, but he had 

 only two or three horses. I rode my first race in a 

 blue jacket, on Barham Downs I think I was 

 second. There wasn't more than four and a-half 

 stone of me then. I rode the same mare at Margate, 

 and had a bad accident there : a chaise crossed the 

 course, and nearly broke my knee. That was a two 

 or three year job. I was so lame I went home again, 

 and father sent me to school for a bit. When I got 

 better, I took a mare of Major Chiseldine's, of So- 

 merby, on the Burrow Hills, down to Timms the 

 trainer, at Nottingham. We galloped them on old 

 Sherwood Forest, and took them to water at the 

 Beeston Water-mill the spot's all covered with fac- 

 tories now. Home again I comes to Cottesmore, 

 and then I had just a lark. Blame me if I didn't 

 ride twenty races in one week at Burleigh Park. 

 What a week it was, to be sure ! cricketing, horse- 

 racing, pony-racing, hacks catch-weights all sorts 



