i;o SPORTS AND ANECDOTES. 



and mount on to your rostrum with perfect confidence 

 in your team and your coachman. Perhaps, and it 

 often is so, your scratch team starts well, and goes 

 off as if they had all been in your coach before, for 

 horses are by nature beasts of burthen, made to 

 draw, and are seldom otherwise than good fellows 

 at heart. But, when they are not good fellows at 

 heart, when they are what is called a three-cornered 

 lot, when your off-leader wants to pull the whole 

 coach himself, and does his best to pull you off the 

 box, and your near-side mare won't go well up to 

 her collar, but hangs back with the bars rattling 

 against her hocks, and swishes her tail, puts back 

 her ears, and seems to have written on her back, 

 " I can kick a town down," when, added to this, you 

 find that your near-wheeler jibs, and that your off- 

 wheeler won't hold an ounce, then look out for 

 squalls, and don't tell me that a scratch team is a 

 pleasant thing to drive. You may fancy so, but it 

 is not the real state of your feelings, or that of your 

 passengers. Should you on such an occasion not be 

 very handy both with your fiddle-strings and your 

 fiddle - stick, and quite up to all emergencies, it 

 will greatly add to your bien-etre if you have a 

 nervous petticoat on the box with you, as she 



