MR. Davy's opinion of mr. smith. 45 



are there, / shall not be missed." Stephen had a great objec- 

 tion to being weighed, but Mr. Harrison got him once into a 

 patent weighing-chair, without his being aware of it, and 

 saw the finger pointing over nineteen on the dial. In the 

 famous Billesden Coplow run, above mentioned, Mr. Smith 

 was allowed to have the best of it down to the brook at 

 Enderby, where his horse fell in. He told a friend that he 

 bought the horse he that day rode, called Furze-cutter, for 

 £26, and sold him after the run to Lord Clonbrock for 

 £400 ; " a pretty good comment," he remarked, " on the 

 place I maintained on that day." 



It may not be inappropriate here to record the following 

 anecdote, related by a Mr. Davy, whose prowess has been 

 recorded by Nimrod, and of whom Mr. Smith said, *'he 

 was the only man of whose riding I was ever jealous."* A 

 large field were assembled at Ashby Pastures, and a fox 

 went away with the pack close at his brush. A long green 

 drive ran parallel with the fields, down which all the 

 horsemen rode save one. A high blackthorn hedge screened 

 the hounds from their view, and they were riding for hard 

 life. All at once some horse was heard on the same side as 

 yie hounds, rattling over the gates, and crashing through 

 the bullfinchers at such a pace, that Davy and another 

 remarked, "Some fellow's horse has purled him and run 

 away." The illusion, however, was soon dispelled by the 

 bounds swinging across the drove, and Tom Smith, on 

 Jack-o'Lantern, sailing by their side ; having beaten every 

 man among them, though they had only to gallop over 

 plain grass, while he had to encounter both gates and 

 fences, and of the stiffest character. This, Davy confessed, 

 was one of the greatest triumphs in horsemanship he had 

 ever witnessed. He also mentioned, that on another occa- 

 sion, after a very sharp run late in the season, the hounds 



* ** Mr. Davy's hand on a horse was proverbial," says old Harkaway 

 in the Sjporting Magazine for August, 1834 ; " like Paganini, he could 

 play on four strings or one." 



