20 RECORDS OF OLD TIMES 



a ventriloquial conversation with an imaginary 

 partisan down in the cellar, calling his attention to 

 the lunatic who had just come out of the asylum, 

 and was bidding for this gate, suggesting that his 

 keeper should be sent for. All this amid shouts of 

 laughter, and the chairman of the trustees calling 

 ' order.' After a long silence another 5/. would be 

 advanced, when the stranger would immediately cap 

 it by saying he would give the reserve. Great con- 

 sternation would follow, and then you would hear 

 the old lessee, who declared he had lost so much by 

 taking the gates for the last two years, say that it 

 had been a good hay and corn harvest, and that 

 the steeplechases would come off in the year, and 

 risk it by giving another 5/., and make it 205/. 

 This recollection of an oft-repeated scene may be 

 accepted as a fair specimen of a gate letting. All 

 the whispering which had taken place beforehand 

 represented an endeavour to buy off every dangerous 

 opponent. Many persons came down from London 

 and elsewhere, under pretence of taking the gates, 

 who earned a sovereign or even 3/. as payment for 

 the day's work from the lessee, who had probably 

 held the gates for the past two or three years and 

 was reluctant to lose them. The business of con- 

 tracting to take turnpikes was in many instances an 

 immensely expensive one. The gentleman who 

 took most of the gates in Bucks and some of the 

 adjoining counties was a Mr. Tongue, living at 

 Manchester, and it was estimated that he had 



