192 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



gaining poundage as the recoil comes, and 

 murderous I call the system for the set man — 

 mind, I speak of serious, strenuous efforts to 

 reduce tissue by going in for strong exercise on 

 starvation diet. Barbarous, simply barbarous, 

 some wasting was. You see very little indeed go 

 on now — and a good job, too — of the sort, with a 

 starved shrimp of a chap, overloaded with 

 clothing, frequently so hampered about the legs 

 as to make striding out irksome and chafing 

 almost a certainty, struggling along, physically 

 beaten and organically overtaxed. Old 'uns can 

 stand reducing themselves better than young- 

 sters, but they rely mostly on the Turkish bath. 

 On the day before the Cambridgeshire, Halsey 

 got down to ride 7 st. 12 lb. on Love Charm, and 

 would, with his careful management, be little the 

 worse for the operation. Taking some pounds 

 off a youth — and remember you do not start with 

 a fed-up subject in dealer's condition, but a skin- 

 and-bone fine-drawn one at best — as Halsey did 

 for himself, might mean lifting his normal weight 

 by a couple of pounds, and it may mean settling 

 him altogether. That has happened before now. 

 The worst waster I ever knew, the least adapted 

 for enduring the process, was the late Fred 

 Barrett, who underwent miseries and dreadful 

 dangers — he had a weak heart — in getting down 

 to steer Alicante for Mr Ephrussi in the 1890 

 Cambridgeshire. 



In the nineties, when 'Mittle" Dick Chaloner 

 was beginning to get a tall, broad-shouldered, 

 big boy, the middle and last Newmarket back- 

 end meetings were celebrated in melting hot 

 haymaking wxather, and little Dick, with a view 

 to a mount at a North Country venue, had to be 



