1 62 The Post and the Paddock. 



wards them, Butler exclaimed — " Why my uncle's 

 horse is dead beat — he will be last /" " Come along!' 

 rejoined Robinson, smiling ; ''you'll hear a different 

 tale at the chair /" and when they did get there, Frank 

 vowed he would ''take cai^e and never believe again 

 that my uncle s beaten till he's past the post'' Lord 

 Jersey and two or three more of the Jockey Club, 

 saw the race about two distances from home, and 

 even there St. Francis seemed to be shirking his 

 work so completely from distress, that they could 

 hardly believe their ears, when they heard that the 

 judge had given him the race by two or three 

 lengths. 



Sam's riding of Bloomsbury against Robinson on 

 Clarion, for the Cesarewitch of 1839, ^.Iso created a 

 great deal of talk at the time, and was one of the most 

 exciting finishes ever known on the Heath. Coming 

 through the Ditch-gap, he was nearly 150 yards behind 

 the light weights, who were raking away at a fearful 

 pace ; but he crept up so gradually inch by inch across 

 the flat that when Robinson found him at his quarters, 

 he involuntarily exclaimed — " Where the devil did you 

 come from f His rush was one of the most tremendous 

 he ever made ; but the horse flinched under nine stone, 

 and he was most bitterly disappointed to hear that the 

 race had been given against him by a neck. He 

 came up right under the judge's chair, while Clarion 

 ran rather wide, and he always maintained that the 

 judge had overlooked him. We cannot say how far 

 his belief was correct, but not a few sided with him ; 

 and it was well known to be rather a failing of the late 

 Mr. Clark's to overlook the horse who ran close under 

 the chair, as in the cases of Little Red Rover, Stock- 

 well, and Merry Peal. Still these oversights, if they 

 were such (and we can only state our own opinion on 

 the last), were mere specks in a career of thirty years 

 in the Newmarket judgment-seat, which was occupied 

 from 1805 to 1822 by his father, and since 1852 by 



