HIS AGILITY IN CHANGING HORSES. 55 



brought, and without dismounting, he vaulted from one to 

 the other, almost without rising from the saddle of the steed 

 he quitted. This was always looked upon as an extraordi- 

 nary feat of agility, and it could not have been performed 

 without great muscular strength.* Mr. Smith continued 

 this practice almost up to the time of his death ; and only 

 two years before that event took place, he was stopping on 

 horseback at the door of one of the clubs in St. James's 

 Street, when a horse was brought up which his owner com- 

 plained of as being most difficult to manage. The squire 

 had him led up alongside, and, although quite strange to him, 

 jumped on his back in the usual style, when, to the astonish- 

 ment of every one, after a turn or two with the refractory 

 horse up and down the street, he brought him back as quiet 

 as a lamb. In fact, he seemed to possess the same fascinat- 

 ing power over horses which he has been already shown to 

 have had over hounds. Much of this power is doubtless to 

 be attributed to his wonderful delicacy of touch in handling 

 a horse. 



The above instance is not the only one where animals, 

 violent and irritable in other hands, have been known to be 

 comparatively quiet in his. There was, however, one excep- 

 tion, and this was in a beautiful brown thoroughbred horse 

 called " Cracker," who took an unaccountable dislike to the 

 squire's red coat, although on all other occasions he was per- 

 feptly tractable. It is related by one of his friends, that he 

 saw this hunter, on his master's attempting to mount him, 

 kick him down in the most savage manner. Mr. Smith was 

 not the man to give in even after such opposition as this, but 

 at length, after many entreaties on the part of his wife, he 



* "In June, 1S58, a few months before his death, Mr, Smith was in 

 Rotten Eow and at Tattersall's, as usual, on Blemish ; and when he 

 rode into the ring one morning, and saw Rarey driving his zebra round 

 it, he made his servant bring his horse alongside, and quite gloried in 

 showing the celebrated American how he could still change horses in 

 a run without dismounting." — Si/k and Scarlet, p. 284. 



