468 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



Buckle, at about the same age, it would appear, was his 

 counterpart. It is recorded of the latter that his 

 nerve was unimpaired even after he had been in the 

 saddle for forty-five years. Well recovered from 

 his Liverpool fall, which kept him in enforced 

 idleness from the previous season, John Osborne 

 accepted the mount on Baron de Hirsch's Water- 

 cress for the St. Leger of 1892. He had then been 

 following his profession as a jockey for forty-six 

 years, and to show that his hand had not lost its 

 cunning or his nerve its strength, he finished third in 

 that memorable race to Baron de Hirsch's ~great mare 

 La Fleche, and Lord Bradford's Sir Hugo, who had won 

 the Derby in a bad year. That performance equals the 

 Green Mantle effort, we should say, of Frank Buckle 

 in his forty-fifth year of professional life an exploit 

 recorded by old chroniclers with pride. 



A contemporary of Buckle's was Sam Chifney. 

 Each of these celebrities preferred to adopt the waiting 

 tactics in riding a race rather than force the running. 

 And such indeed was the method which John Osborne 

 approved of, by which he won most of his great 

 races. The story of Jacob, the blacksmith, who 

 for many years shod John Scott's horses at 

 Whitehall, and Frank Buckle, is not too much 

 worn to be repeated here. Frank Buckle was 

 then in his fame, and he, too, belonged to the old school 

 that affected riding waiting races. Buckle was 

 mounted on one of the Whitehall cracks, and he 

 observed, "If I win by the length of my arm, Jacob, 

 won't that do as well as winning by a couple of lengths ?" 

 " Nay, lad," explained the son of Vulcan, " thy f oine 

 finishes shorten a man's loife. What's fuse o' hevin' a 

 nag that's fit to roon if thee wonna mak' use on him? " 



