36 The Post and the Paddock. 



Guelph would be puzzled to find even one of those 

 Edwardses whose numbers struck him as inexhaus- 

 tible. In his day there was no more consummate 

 judge of pace than Tommy Lye ; and perhaps he won 

 more two-mile heat races than any man who was ever 

 out, from this cause, as the lads on the three-year-olds 

 had not a tithe of the practice of the modern juniors, 

 and were sure to " come back" to him in the second 

 and third heats. It it came to four or five heats, 

 Tommy was absolutely invincible. His attitude, when 

 he was finishing, was not perhaps all that could be 

 desired ; waggish writers, in fact, have spoken of him 

 as " two feet of silk, and three feet of boots and wash- 

 leather, in convulsions;" and he also looked any- 

 thing but picturesque as he rode the odd-tempered 

 Italian and Zoroaster one or two races in their sheets ; 

 but he was wonderfully powerful for his size, and his 

 energy on the Duke of Cleveland's monster Sampson, 

 in two four-mile races in one day, quite astonished 

 us. 



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 7lbs., or even more on an 

 emergency, in twenty-four hours, and Nat is said to 

 have managed 4|lbs. 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 3lb. saddle to 

 the weighing-house, and have to borrow a 5lb. 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 per- 



