32 STABLE SECRETS. 



travelling from one part of the kingdom to the other, and yet 

 expects to see a race-'oss bred, broken, trained, entered, and 

 brought to the post fit to run on his merits, and win the Bank 

 of England for the public ! When it pulls off a good stake, it 

 doesn't say, ' Here's a share of what you've done for us,' does it ? 

 And when it loses — no matter how or why — a good deal of 

 anti-scriptural is indulged in, and the Stable's called a low set 

 of sanguinary appropriators. A good deal I have to care for 

 the public ! Just about as much as the public has to care for 

 me." And then Mr. James Sloper might have been seen to 

 gently rub the ends of his fingers together — as was his wont — 

 not for the purpose of creating the smallest increase of circula- 

 tion, but as a cat chafes her nose now and then, as a prelimi- 

 nary, perhaps, to using her claws. 



Now it must be conceded as a truism that things may 

 possess life without being at the same time lively, as the bivalve 

 oyster, whelk, and other molluscous animals bear ample testi- 

 mony. The same rule applies to the great consumers of oysters, 

 whelks, and other molluscs, when a man declares that " he is 

 more dead than alive," and looks the perfect exemplification of 

 what he says. There are degrees of life, as there are degrees of 

 heat and cold, and strength or weakness in foreign spirits, snuff, 

 tobacco, and British beer. From a pressure of circumstances, 

 to which it is unnecessary to refer at the present moment, Puffy 

 Doddles had "many a time and oft," since his introduction to 

 the Great Stable of the North, felt "more dead than alive," 

 although entirely free from the smallest indication that he was 

 about shaking off this mortal coil. 



Alive, but not lively, Robert Top's best lad knew, occasion- 

 ally, what it was to be a long way off from that circle of 

 acquaintances with whom he had spent many pleasant evenings 

 in playing pitch and toss, cribbage, varied by a " go in," now 

 and then, of odd man. Whatever bitterness, however, was 

 engendered in comparing the pleasures of the past with the, 

 self-denial and want of joy in the present, Puffy Doddles never 



