56 TALES AND TRAITS OF SPORTING LIFE. 



Stand to watch a Delightful or a Designful sweep b}-- 

 under the delicate handling- of careful Jemmy. No more 

 shall '' the Vicar " fairly thrash out his fiver in the secoiid, 

 first, third, and first — that ultimately lands it. No man 

 shall natty Arthur give even Mr. Peyton himself a wrinkle 

 in the way of a good get up^ or "Honest John " save the 

 Two Year Old hy a head, and win the Guineas in a canter 

 en Little Red Rover, with all the staid propriety and 

 decorum so befitting such an occasion. They are gone ! 

 In hut a brief season or so. Chappie^ Wakefield, Isaac 

 Sadler, Isaac Day, and at last *^ Old " John himself, 

 have fallen, as it were like ninepins, one over the 

 other. 



But amongst them all there was no such a remarkable 

 man as the one whose career stands as a heading to this 

 paper. It was not merely as a jockey of local repute that 

 John Day was celebrated, not chiefly from winning on his 

 own horses over his own ground. He could follow Chappie 

 back to Newmarket, and try his head and hand succes^fullj^ 

 against the Buckles, Chifneys, and Robinsons over that 

 classic heath. He could face the howling wilderness of Ep- 

 som, and out-general the canny north-countryman in his 

 own home, and outlast him for the ver}' race of his heart. 

 Perhaps, however, after all, it is not as a rider of horses 

 so much that John Day's name will live. We question 

 greatly whether the majority of sportsmen would not be 

 more inclined to honour him in another branch of the 

 science, and to pit him rather against John Scott the 

 trainer than William Scott the jockey. In point of fact,, 

 he long stood the ordeal of this com])arison, and when 

 Malton began to threaten, people instinctively turned to 

 Danebury lor the answer. The two Johns knew well 

 enough how often the strength of their strings and the 



