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CHAPTER XL 



BLOOD SIRES. 



" The Knight a dappled grey bestrode, 

 Whose haughty crest and eye of fire 

 Told of his tameless. Eastern sire." 



THE young clovers were never so good as they 

 are this year," was the juicy lure which once 

 caught our eye, in a Sheet Calendar advertisement, 

 towards the close of an especially frigid January. It 

 smacked so strongly of the quaint stud-literature of 

 the olden time, when Eclipse was in his glory at the 

 Clayhill Farm, near Epsom, and less ambitious co- 

 temporaries had visitors carefully consigned to them, 

 from the "The Pyed Horse, near Chairing Cross," 

 that we could not refrain from taking a copious sur- 

 vey of those musty paddock records. How strangely 

 their laboured verbosity and facetiousness contrasted 

 with the modest and meagre recitals of the present 

 day — " The Hero, at Danebury, ten sovs.," to wit ! 

 To judge from their tenor, our forefathers must have 

 thought differently to ourselves on some horse points, 

 or else it would hardly be urged in a sire's favour that 

 he " was a compleat strong horse, and well whited," 

 or that he was " remarkably upright in the pasterns." 

 The blendings of praise and apology are also wonder- 

 fully unique. Each owner seemed to feel that, if 

 there was a blot in his favourite's fame, then or never 

 was the time to explain it away. Petruchio's last 

 defeat, for instance, is softened down by a suggestion 



