i62 JOCKEYS. 



have won, and you receive the heartfelt condolence of your 

 friends on your bad luck. If, nettled at the result, you 

 venture a remonstrance, the youth, with a confident audacity, 

 will lay the blame upon the horse, and will add with supreme 

 indifference, " If I had not minded what I was about, I 

 should have gone the wrong side of a post or two, I was 

 shut in and run against ; " and will wind up by affirming 

 with the utmost complacency, " I managed to keep him 

 straight, and made a good effort to win at the proper time." 

 If this be not the excuse, he will probably look you in the face 

 and declare that your horse was not fit, and that beat him. 



This is the result of trials and months of watchfulness at 

 home. Your calculations are upset by the woful exhibitions 

 of these pigmies when your horse, in primest condition, comes 

 to run in public. And nothing that I can see will alter this 

 lamentable state of things, until the scale of weights be 

 raised, when the services of men may be secured in lieu of 

 those of boys. 



It must certainly be said for these unfortunates who ruin 

 themselves in the destruction they thus deal broadcast on 

 others, that they are but boys. A portion of the blame is 

 their own ; but another, and the greater part of it, falls to 

 others. Lord Byron says : — 



" The youlh who trains to ride or run a race, 

 Must bear privations with unruffled face." 



It would be well if this couplet were borne in mind by 

 employers, friends, and backers ; for often the lads, intoxi- 

 cated with the success that in reality they have done so 

 little to achieve, will, at the invitation of fortunate backers, 

 drink champagne and smoke cigars, until the indulgence in 

 these things becomes a confirmed habit. Then they forget 

 themselves, and lose their position by leaving, with the joy 



