278 Saddle and Sirloin. 



were admirable, down to the cloak-room, with cloak- 

 pegs innumerable, and " the jewel-room," where a 

 silversmith sets his wares in array, and fits up winners 

 with cups. The police bivouack thirty strong, in the 

 same " Wood Street." They have plenty of night 

 work, as the men; more especially the grooms, get 

 very drunk, and make night hideous with their hulla- 

 baloo. They cannot sleep for the heat, and therefore 

 they will, to use their own phrase, " still be lapping," 

 which means that they are always at the canteen for 

 soda-water, or something a little stronger. Under its 

 influence they run foot races with nothing on but their 

 shirts, and it is daylight before those gentlemen in 

 white finish their revels and return to their straw 

 wisps. There are some quaint characters among the 

 grooms. One of them was attacked last year by five 

 men in a garden at Scarborough. " If it had been 

 nobbut one or two, I could have warmed him," was 

 his version of the combat, " but five's owre mony ; so 

 I just put my hand in my pocket, and kep shifting 

 till somebody came. I let 'em just batter away at my 

 head ; I can stan' a deal of rough wark that way, if I 

 nobbut hod to the brass." 



But we have to deal with day, and not with night 

 scenes ; and we first make our way, in obedience to 

 old instincts, to the shorthorn ring. Three good 

 judges are inside it Jamie Douglas, who once could 

 beat on " the grand tour" the heifers of the three 

 kingdoms with his Rose of Summer and his Second 

 Queen of Trumps ; Charles Howard, of Oxford Down 



hares, rabbits, and other "travellers." The herdsman and his assis- 

 tants never went near any other cattle or person engaged about cattle on 

 any pretence whatever ; and if the Captain had been out hunting, or 

 anywhere else in the country, he never entered the sheds until he had 

 changed his clothes. Second Duke of Wharfedale was slaughtered 

 after a slight accident, rather than run the risk of bringing a veterinary 

 surgeon to attend upon him ; and when the butcher came for fat sheep 

 they were driven out of the field for him while he waited with his dog 

 on the roa4, 



