212 PROFESSIONAL HARDSHIPS. 



suspicions aroused — indeed many of them would have given 

 a good premium for the choice of the claim. The horse 

 was heavily engaged in all the following spring handicaps, 

 his impost being 5 st. 7 lbs. ; but he never went to the post 

 for one. I was never thanked for my share in the matter, 

 nor the boy rewarded for his successful and artistic services ; 

 but, stranger than all, the other equally bad horse was 

 kept on until three years old, and entered for the Chester 

 Cup, for which he became a good favourite. I expressed 

 to the owner a hope that he was not backing him, because 

 the animal could beat nothing. But he would not be con- 

 vinced, and took the horse away from me, and after running 

 him on several occasions without the least chance of success, 

 ultimately sold him as useless. This, it may be allowed, 

 was ill-treatment of the trainer ; but the sting of it was, 

 that previously to removing the horse he said to me, " I 

 know that you think him a good horse, and have backed 

 him for the Chester Cup." I may often have been accused 

 of backing good horses, or of laying against bad ones, in 

 either of which acts there is some sense ; but this was the 

 first time I had ever been accused of backing a horse that I 

 knew could not beat a hack. 



Another instance, I think the most impudent of many 

 audacious experiences, was when an Irish gentleman, some 

 seven feet high, came to see his friend's horses ; having, 

 I must allow, permission to do so. Nothing pleased this 

 son of the Emerald Isle. He took back with him a pitiful 

 tale ; in which the matters that met his approval may be 

 briefly summed as nothing, against a list yards in length 

 of grievances. There was nothing, to his mind, as it should 

 be in a racing-stable ; at any rate he had never seen things 

 done in the same fashion in Ireland. He had much to 



