40 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



CHAPTER IV 



" Honour and shame from no condition rise, 

 Act well your part, there all the honour lies." 



OLD John Osborne did some service to the State as a 

 sire. Now entered into the " forties," he had presented 

 several hostages to fortune, so that his household 

 increased with the number of horses that were in the 

 Ashgill haras. The two elder sons, William and Robert, 

 were already grown into big lads, so big, indeed, that 

 any dreams of them keeping within a reasonable weight 

 as jockeys were soon dissipated. But there was yet the 

 third son of the family to look forward to as the jewel 

 much wanted in a stable which up to that time had been 

 the nursery of jockeys. A " featherweight " in those 

 days of lightly framed handicaps was now advanced, 

 in the year of grace 1846, to the age of thirteen years. 

 Probably a bright, merry, active, handy stripling he 

 was, with the instinctive love of jockey ship and of 

 horses imbued in him by his associations from very 

 infancy. This boy was none other than the present 

 John Osborne, destined to become a bright and 

 shining actor in the great, stirring scenes of the Turf 

 for the succeeding half-century. Often enough, no 

 doubt, the child had been pitched into the saddle by 



