THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 311 



where two or three others of the amateur coachmen of 

 his day assembled, and where excellent hand-in-the-pocket 

 dinners were partaken of by the passengers which each 

 brought down first-class men in their line, of course. 

 But, it may be asked, were there no mishaps on the road 

 from this after-dinner work, with well-bred and highly- 

 fed cattle (the expressive epithet " spicy," was not then 

 in the vocabulary) ? Not often. A pole was broken one 

 night between Brentford and London, by an amateur 

 working for his amateur friend, and who dropped one of 

 his reins, although a very good coachman ; and on another, 

 owing to a bolt on the shoot from off Kew Bridge, a 

 singular accident occurred. No sooner did the horses 

 feel the drag press upon them, than they got the better 

 of their driver, also a first-rate workman, and were only 

 pulled lip by coming in contact with some iron paling, 

 enclosing a gentleman's grounds. " A dreadful smash, of 

 course a case for the coroner ! " methinka I hear my 

 reader exclaim. Two horses were killed, it is true, but 

 the Corinthians escaped, with the exception of one, who 

 was actually impaled on the iron spikes on which he fell ; 

 but, hard as Corinthian brass, he was not killed, and in 

 a few weeks recovered. Then, on another occasion, in 

 returning from Salt Hill, our hero had a narrow escape, 

 as had also the party who were on his coach. His horses 

 got the better of him, and where, reader, would you 

 suppose they were pulled up ? You would never guess, 

 so you shall hear at once. Between the eight horses of tht 

 down Exeter waggon! Miraculous as it may appear, 

 neither man nor horse was injured to any serious extent. 

 The fact was, what are called " the stretchers " rods 

 aboiit the thickness of a mop handle, which were attached 

 to each pair of the waggon-horses, to prevent their lean- 

 ing toward each other in their work checked the career 

 of the horses, as they broke their way through them, and 

 so far modified the collision between the waggon and the 

 coach, as to cause no further damage than breaking the 

 pole of the latter, and hurting two of the horses. 



It was during this visit to London that Frank Raby 

 was elected a member of the B.D.C., at that time held at 

 the small town of Benson, in Oxfordshire, but afterwards 

 removed, on account of the distance from London, to the 

 Black Dog Inn, at Bedfont, a small village fourteen miles 

 from London, on the Great Western Road, then kept by 



