272 MR. SWINDELL. 



course at Newmarket, when Foxhall ran for the 

 Cesarewitch. He was standing alongside one of 

 my former patrons, whom I had been trying to per- 

 suade to back him {Foxhall), but he hardly believed 

 in him, and said : 



' I suppose he is a four-year-old?' 

 Swindell immediately replied in the gravest 

 manner possible : 



' If I did not think he was five, at least, I should 

 not have backed him,' naturally causing a burst of 

 irrepressible laughter from all around him. 



At Newmarket, latterly, he seldom left the fly that 

 brought him to the course, except to enter the Bird- 

 cage to discuss with gentlemen, or others of his own. 

 standing, things past and future, or to gather some 

 scraps of information ; or still better, to tell or hear 

 some good thing — as some adroit trick, or some 

 lucky hit made by an unlikely person ; for, as he said, 

 ' Everyone had some game at which he is good.' 

 At Doncaster, Epsom, and Ascot he ahvays shunned 

 the crowd, taking up his station in some out-of-the- 

 w^ay place near the ring, known to his satellites, in 

 whose society he found plenty to amuse him. I 

 never saw him at a small race-meeting ; and it must 

 have been something particularly requiring his 

 personal attendance that would have drawn him to 

 such a gathering. 



He dearly loved to have a chat with such wags as 

 Charlie Coghlan, Francis Ignatius Coyle, and latterly 



