102 TALES AND TRAITS OF SPORTING LIFE. 



throwing a fly. But with a commission in the First 

 Royals, our ^' dashing" j^oungster, as they called them in 

 those times, soon rose to higher game than filling a 

 creel or hunting the hare. A turn for racing was then 

 almost as prominent amongst the follies of the day as it is 

 still ; and in 1807, '^ — Craven, Esq.," ran his first horse, 

 Pic-niC; at Reading. By the next season, he was a sub- 

 scriher to the Calendar, and drew first Mood at so impo- 

 sing a place as Newmarket, where he won his maiden race, 

 a match, with the significantly titled " Fly by Night j" 

 and Charles Goodison, a brother of the more fam3us Tom, 

 as his first jockey. Bantam, by Gohanna, was another 

 favourite and a better nag ; while he was fond enough of 

 Jannette to think he could win the Oaks with her. This 

 was in 1810, and the Captain consoled himself for 

 the disappointment by his marriage in the same 

 year ; and for a long period his passion for the turf 

 was put into abeyance. Even, indeed, as a racing man 

 his orbit was eccentric, and for ten or twelve years he had 

 not a horse in w^ork • but in '24 he came to the post again 

 in far greater form than ever. That very clever man, 

 John Dilty, of Littleton, who added a touch of the saint 

 to his other eminent qualifications, was engaged to train^ 

 and the elegant Sam Day, then in his very zenith as a 

 jockey, took the purple jacket and orange cap into his 

 keeping. They brought half-a-dozen out during the sea- 

 son, and amongst them a couple of three-year-olds, pur- 

 chased of Forth, the trainer. With one of these Mr. 

 Craven again believed he could win the Oaks, and amongst 

 his other gi'eat friends he got some of the blood Royal to 

 back her. But the Duke of Gloucester met him only 

 with a pleasant smile and a half shake of the head when 

 it was over — '* Well, Craven, you see we are all ruined by 



