with, my books, quite grave. I loved nothing
like horses, and when I was only six or seven I
used to go out on my ponies bare back, and jump
everything, right and left, just like other people.
My word, I could sit a good many. I rode to
hounds when I was eight years old.

"I was put apprentice to a butcher, Mr. Hubbard
they called him. Many's the sheep I've
killed. I could skin a head like winking, out I
liked going to market best. He had a little
blue frock made for me, all trim and nice. But
one market day he leaves me at home, and said
I should drive the dung-cart." This did not
suit Dick's dignity, so after various tricks with
the horse and cart, he ran off home. " When
Mr. Hubbard comes back, he says, 'Where's my
boy?' and then he off after me. He wanted me
sadly to come back with him; but I says, 'Sir,
your kindness is more than I deserve, but it's
no use, my mind is set upon horses.' And so it
has been to this day. I would be somewhere
about twelve and a half when I went to Sir
Horace Mann's racing stables at Barham Downs,
Kent, and rode my first race there. There
wasn't more than four and a half stone of me
then. Oh dear, what monkey tricks I was up
to. Some mountebanks comes to Canterbury,
and the trainer lends me his pony. Coming
home, I thought I would do as they did. I jumps
on the saddle and there I stands, and gallops by
the side of a post-chaise all the way home, the
people inside laughing at me. One of them
pitched me a shilling.

"I rode at Margate, and had a bad accident
with my knee. It was a two or three years job,
so, being lame, I went home; father sent me to
school a bit. Then I went down to Timms, the
trainer at Nottingham. We galloped the horses
in old Sherwood Forest, and took them to water
at Beeston water-mill— the spots are covered
with factories now. Home again to Collesmere.
Blame me, if I didn't ride twenty races
in one week in Bushy Park. What a week
it was to be sure, pony-racing, hacks, all sorts of
fun. Rode a race on a pony against Lord Milsington
(him as married the Duke of Ancaster's
daughter). It was only half a mile: away I
jumped, and he never catched me. What a deal
they made of me. They carried me into the
tent and gave me three glasses of wine and a fine
mounted whip. Then Lord Winchelsea made a
match with me against Captain Bligh, a first-rate
runner and cricketer— me to ride a donkey and
he to run afoot half a mile. But, my word, I
beat him at last, and they gave me my first gold
guinea! Thousands and thousands were there,
but I suppose they're all dead now.

"After this 'ere racing concern, Sir Gilbert
Heathcote sent his huntsman for me to go over
to Normanton Park. Stevenson went with me,
and Sir Gilbert and his lady (she was very kind
to me, bless her) came out to us. My lady quite
laughed. 'That little thing for a riding-groom!'
she said; 'he can't sit a horse.' 'Try him, my
lady,' said Stevenson (you see he always spoke
up for me); 'give him one saddled and one to
lead.' Up I gets with the two, and off across
the park. Didn't I take it out of them. Galloped
until Sir Gilbert hollers me to stop. 'He'll
do,' they said; 'he can hold anything.' I
always rode out with the lady in a blue coat and
striped waistcoat, and I rode second horse for
Sir Gilbert. Mr. Watson, he once said to him,
'You'll kill that boy, riding day after day without
stirrups.' Bless you, I could turn a
somersault in them days; when I felt the horse
going I throwed myself clean over and lighted
on my legs— no end of gentlemen saw it."

With this introduction we have a self-painted
picture of the mind and manner of the man
who, at eighty, was still "light-legged, sturdy,
five foot six, broad of chest, and stout of arm,"
and anxious to ride a steeple-chase against any
one within ten years of his own age.

As his peculiar business has been to turn raw
colts and race-horses into finished hunters, and
to keep up his reputation among his customers,
who were the hunting men of three generations,
by going straight first if possible, it is not
astonishing to find that Dick had lots of accidents.
"This here leg broke, two of my ribs—
never broke my collar-bone, so precious thick-set
they can't get at it. Bless you, I've known
horses get out of a ditch, and put their fore legs
on each of my shoulders; my coat's been all
split up by them! But," says the game veteran,
"I see no fear, not even now, and can see a distance
just as well as ever, when I'm with
hounds." And so we find, when he comes to
tell the story of his adventure thirty years ago
with the Quorn hounds, when in four successive
leaps, the first of nearly nineteen feet, in all
fifty-three feet, his horse carried him safe to the
bottom of an old quarry, with a sloping side
as steep as the roof of a Gothic gable, "for,"
says our hero, "you see Mr. Coke— what howdacious
men to ride he and Sir James Musgrave
were to be sure— told me I must always go if it
killed the mare. So this Marigold I sent her at a
hedge; when I was in the air I sees my danger.
Frightened? God bless you, I was never frightened
in my life; so I pulls her right back just
as she touched the bank, and shot her hind legs
under her. We made three landings of it."
These three landings, were, first, a thick-cut
hedge, four feet six high, lighting on a bank a
yard wide, and then three bounds into the pit,
the last bound being nineteen feet nine inches,
as carefully measured from the hind legs to the
hind leg marks again.

After this we understand him when he exclaims,
"Ah! what fun I had with horses in
my day! I could fairly live in the air."

With these qualifications, it is not astonishing
to find that a noted and fashionable horse-dealer
engaged Dick when George the Third was king,
and George the Plump, Regent, as tutor to his
hunters and his son, "a nice little boy only
fourteen, and never an ounce above five stone.
Poor little Matty, I killed him. He used to cry
sadly. Old Matty would make him follow me.
I well-nigh drownded him two or three times; I
brought him up just as I wur brought up myself.
My orders was to go and catch 'em. And the