IIG TALES AND TRAITS OF SPORTING LIFE. 



tiie credit for giving his horses more work than corn. I 

 will, though, do him the justice to say that my colt 

 thrived under the treatment, whatever it was, and came 

 to the satisfactory * that announced his arrival at the 

 scene of action, looking as bright and seeming as fit as a 

 horse could be. My man, moreover, in that knowing, 

 negative manner the thorough!}' initiated express their 

 opinions, confessed that he thought '^the horse would not 

 disgrace himself;" while one of the paper prophets boldly 

 named him in the three the race was between ; another, 

 with less confidence, making him a '^cock-boat," 



If our "party" really had a failing, it was the 

 unceasing war they, or rather he, waged against the 

 " ex's " aforesaid. I should be afraid to say how many 

 races he had lost by putting up his own lads, instead of 

 experienced jockeys, or the wonderful sacrifices he sub- 

 Riitted to in a variety of ways, to save a sovereign or t?vo. 

 Luckily, however, " Snowy " could hardly get the weight 

 this time ; and so we telegraphed a four-stone-nothing bit 

 of humanity from Newmarket to take his place — a sober, 

 serious child, with the head-piece of a man of fifty, and 

 the bodily frame of a monke3\ It was a great thing to get 

 him ; and the horse sprung a point or two in consequence. 

 If it came to a finish now, we should have our fair chance 

 for it — an assured fact that seemed amply satisfactory to 

 everybody but "Snowy," who took his being passed over 

 with anything but a good grace. 



The last gallop over all right, and I left home on the 

 morning of the race with visions of such curtains and such 

 ])aperings dancing in Bessie's bright eyes, as she bade me 

 good-bye and good luck, that none but Madame Vestris 

 in the great days of the Lyceum could have thoroughly real- 

 ized. I had some distance to go, and was rather late on the 



