9a Silk and Scarlet, 



his patients had to show a clean bill of health during 

 the Chester race week, or give up all hope of having 

 him. The Stationers' Almanack was not truer to the 

 year than his yellow gig with his fourteen-one Brown 

 Tommy to the Hop Pole yard at Chester, on that 

 Saturday afternoon. On the Monday he sallied forth 

 to the Hotel Row, and received a hearty annual wel- 

 come from all the lovers of " the Turf and the Sod," 

 to whom, from his quiet worth, and his wonderful 

 memory and information on every point, he had be- 

 come so endeared. Years wrought no change in the 

 dress or figure of this old Cheshire worthy, or 

 quenched his love for either science. The cock-pit 

 began at eleven, and the in-go ended soon after one ; 

 and then before a Grand Stand arose, he was always 

 to be seen, stationed on Tommy, in the middle of the 

 Roodee, to watch what horses were doing all round, 

 and armed with a gigantic umbrella. He held the 

 belief that there were "always so many fools on a 

 race-course," and hence he kept it to shoot out in 

 self-defence, in the faces of the young blades as they 

 galloped recklessly across him from the cords to the 

 river rails. 

 The Chester Cocking was then the chosen amuse- 

 Cocking. ment of the race mornings, and no one 

 on this point was so great an authority as the Doctor. 

 He spoke, too, out of the fulness of his strange expe- 

 rience, as he had the privilege of all the walks on the 

 Combermere, Shavington, Adderley, Doddington, 

 Peckforton, Beeston, Oulton, and divers other estates 

 in Cheshire, Shropshire, and Wales, In some seasons 

 he sent out a thousand chickens, of which barely one- 

 third would be reared, or fit to produce at an impor- 

 tant main. After dinner, on the Saturday of his 

 arrival at Chester, he gave an audience to his feeder, 

 to sound him as to the condition of his cocks, and 

 learn his opinion of the forthcoming main ; and not 

 unfrequently that functionary would arrive with a 



