FRAGMENTS FROM THE DIARY OF A SEXAGENARIAN.

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Good reader, when next we meet we hope to intelligence thee of many notable things appertaining to our noble sport, and to speak to thee of matters, which this shandean rambling talk of ours has no space for. We may, too, perchance, have some heresies to broach in the received orthodoxy of anglers. Captain Mack we found to be as great a reformer as Luther, in his way; and on his head we ask you to visit the vengeance due to our backslidings, if they be not justified by thy sense and experience. Vale, vale.

W. H. R.

FRAGMENTS FROM THE DIARY OF A SEXA

GENARIAN.

A.D. 1834.

For the last three-and-thirty years I have occupied the same set of offices, third floor front, Change Alley, Cornhill, opposite the applestall at Garraway's corner: at the date of my first occupancy I had numbered seven-and-twenty summers, leaving me threescore off, errors excepted. The state of life unto which it had pleased Providence to call me was, for the most part, cast among men with saffron visages, calico shirts, and limber legs; that is to say, I was a broker in the East India trade, though occasionally doing business in the general line, such as in raw fat, sheep skins, butter, oil, leather, wool, soap, and the like. My father had been of the same calling; and upon a visit which he paid to Bristol on a matter of negotiating some Bundlecund indigo for Leeward Island molasses, he ran his head against the daughter of a Somersetshire squire, who was recruiting a broken collar-bone and a dislocated shoulder-blade at the Hot Wells, adjacent to that city. The consequence of this was that matrimony was committed; and of such ill-assorted hymeneals I was the produce. From the hour of my birth I gave signs of the cross that was in my blood: I was never happy but astride of the bannisters; and but for an especial act of mercy that received me in a foul clothesbasket, when I fell from the second-floor landing on one of my equestrian exploits, this diary had never seen the light.

As a birthday present, on my fifth anniversary, my grandpapa sent me a pony all the way from "famous Somersetshire," as the song calls it. On this I used to visit a quiet little pack of harriers in the vicinity of Stanmore, where I was first blooded. In process of time I became my own master, and used to venture upon a bolt to the Magpies on Hounslow Heath to see a royal deer uncarted. Well, things went on in this way for some time; but as the French proverb says-I don't know the language, or I would quote it-however, it is something about the first step, I think. As I was going to say, one day taking a desperate resolution, I threw myself into the arms of the Old Berkeley,

flourished my hat in the air, roared "Tally ho!" and forthwith became a regular fox-hunter. I had now a couple of decent nags in my stable, enjoyed my field sports, but without losing sight of the main chance. I have seen a fox broken up stylishly in Hertfordshire at one o'clock, and at three taken my station upon the Royal Exchange with a face as demure as a man-milliner: Lloyd's, Tattersall's; Tom Bish, Bob Oldaker-one down, another come on. Such was my way of life, hunting three days a week generally, my horses at livery, and myself at grass at Kilburn, where I had a small cottage, and an old housekeeper as deaf as a post. It is needless, I suppose, to say that I am a bachelor; indeed, I never but once ran the risk of being married; fortunately for me, the lady had taken a fancy for romance, in consequence of having lodged part of one summer on the borders of Epping Forest, and happening accidentally to hear me speak disparagingly of moonlight and nightingales, she straightway cut me as dead as Desdemona. I bore my disappointment with great philosophy; and dedicated to Diana the time thus saved from Venus. I mixed very little with society: when in the city, I stuck to cotton, indigo, and rice, like wax; and when at Kilburn, my only associate was a retired sugar-boiler from Whitechapel, who, from living much with Germans, had learned to cultivate taciturnity and tobacco; however he drank his port-wine like a gentleman, and didn't trouble his friends much with his conversation. Together we used to smoke our cigar and drink our bottle, as we are told the patriarchs did long ago under their vines and fig-trees. The blood of the old Nimrod, my grandsire, was hard at work within me, and taught me to despise the base money-getting codgers with whom I found every hunt polluted within a circle of a score miles round the Monument. I had nothing else for it though; and so I was forced to trust myself in hunting fields among cadaverous cockneys, whose style of riding make them (the fields) as dangerous as that of Armageddon. I had no other simile at hand, or I would have chosen it, inasmuch as general readers are not particularly familiar with the apocalyptic commentaries.

fat

I had stuck to the life detailed above for thirty-three years and some days, when I found myself seated at a corner table in the coffee-room of the London Tavern on Ludgate Hill, a capital place for a quiet peck, and most creditable to the genius of Mr. Lovegrove. By the bye, I don't exactly see the propriety of the designation "coffee-rooms" for places where people go to consume beefsteaks and drink porter; that, however, is no business of mine: there I was, intent upon my evanescent basin of turtle, the last morsel of green perched upon the point of my trident. I became meditative-a cutlet, "sauce Robert," disappeared, a bottle of Coté Roti replaced it-it was the very hour for contemplation. Matters stood well with me in the three per cent. reduced annuities, together with a sprinkling of India stock and bonds. To what end, then, should I toil and labour longer? Besides, I was weary of housekeeping to my inmost vitals: the deaf old woman was defunct-"the mother of the maids" was gone-and the two young hussies at Kilburn were following a course, the very thought of which threw me into a cold sweat I

never got home of a night without finding them both at the streetdoor surrounded by a pack of Tatterdemallions, who were sure to be their brothers or cousins just arrived from the country with letters from their aunts and mothers. My right-hand neighbour had already gone, and the old soap-boiler on the other side of me had given notice for Lady-day; in fact, there were some unpleasant reports of an interference on the part of the parish authorities, and I saw nothing for it but to break up the camp. Thank God, London is the place where, without the inconvenience of magi and sorcerers, a metamorphosis is effected without as much as the trouble of waving a wand. Solomon Emanuel Moses was my genius of the lamp: the man of Israel enacting Midas, and turning my pots and pans," and everything that was mine" at Kilburn, into gold in the twinkling of a bedpost. Thus my household gods disappeared from my suburban retreat; my offices in the city were snapped up by a young drysalter; and in forty-eight hours from the operation of the horrid thoughts which had taken advantage of my despondency, I found myself in the heart of the metropolis as solitary as a pelican in the wilderness.

I was now what is called a gentleman at large; got up when I pleased, did as I pleased, and let out my brains in fallow, which had been almost worked to death with successions of rice, cotton, and indigo. But rising at your own hour, dining at your own time, and even letting your brains slumber in peace, becomes very tiresome and fatiguing. I had reckoned without my host in supposing a life without occupation one of ease and happiness: I never was so perpetually disquieted as when I had nothing to do. A wet day came upon me arrayed in all the paraphernalia of a coroner's inquest. The classics had formed no part of my education, which had been "more useful than ornamental;" and I knew as little of the belles lettres as the Emperor of Morocco knows of the Cherokee Indians. There was no use in trying to conceal any longer the truth, that I had become one of those incurables for whom, thanks to heaven, such stately hospitals are erected on the coasts and elsewhere, called watering-places-salt, fresh, hot, tepid, and cold. I am afraid the reader will think me a long time coming to the point. I assure him I am writing as fast as I can; and I think I know what I am about, too, although I am not one of your fine highflying cavalieros, with their scraps of Greek and Latin, Italian and French, stuck here and there, like plums in a boarding-school dumpling. I first turned my thoughts towards Leamington; but that place, notwithstanding its attractions, was too Irish and rolicking for the wrong end of a century. Cheltenham laboured under the same disadvantages, coupled with the certainty of meeting at every turn my old masters in calico shirts, with faces grown still yellower, and legs more limber. At last, after diligently turning over all the "guides to the watering-places" upon which I could lay my hands, I fixed upon Brighton; and there I am at this present writing. Some of my old associates, before I left town, attempted to turn aside my selection on the grounds of expense; but I knew that was all gammon. "Jack," my excellent progenitor used to

say, "when you go to an inn, choose the best; there you are well served, and you pay for it: at an indifferent one you are fleeced and starved." The old broker spoke like an oracle. Order an omelet aux fines herbes at the Clarendon; it costs money, but you have such a condiment worthy of Quin or Sir William Curtis. Go to the Cat and Bagpipes, and they will serve you one for half the money, made of sawdust, train-oil, and assafœtida. I don't clearly understand why the proprietors of public carriages on the Brighton line* insist that people should have an appetite for dinner at one o'clock who breakfast at eleven; yet such I was instructed was their practice: so I registered a vow at the Elephant and Castle against being seduced into anything beyond a glass of sherry and a biscuit. However, man after all is but flesh and blood, and easily led into temptation. As I entered the parlour of the White Hart at Reigate-where passengers are crammed according to the rules aforesaid-I felt as if I could not have picked the pinion of the fairest fowl that ever flew in the garden of Eden. In the centre of that room was spread a table, whereon reclined two fascinating pullets, with bosoms as temptingly brunette as the cheeks of the sunny daughters of Castile: adjacent to these reposed the chine of a tender porker, that had died in blessed ignorance of trough or sty: diffused around were broccoli of the hue of the emerald, and potatoes white and mealy as "unsunned snow." Could created gastric stand such things? My very mouth waters as I write. The result is easily imagined.

(To be continued.)

DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS.

A SONG.

BY J. E. CARPENTER, ESQ.

"Tis said the world's a stage,

Its scenes of joy and sorrow;
For who can e'en presage
What may befall to-morrow?
Then, as life's brief, in bliss

Let's revel till death claim us,

For there's nought more true than this-
Dum vivimus vivamus.

Fill high the flowing bowl,

And circle round the table;

Come, each jovial soul,

Be happy while you're able.

Jolly god of wine

Thy sons, great Bacchus, name us

Our life's best hours are thine:

Dum vivimus vivamus.

* The reader will bear in mind the date of this diary shows this is extracted.-ED.

ON TRAINING THE RACE-HORSE.

BY COTHERSTONE.

“Let me appear, great sir, I pray,
Methodical in what I say."

STABLE DISCIPLINE, DRESSING, AND FEEDING.*

Notwithstanding a faculty be born with us, it will be very uncertain in its effects, unless we adopt regular order and strict method in cultivating and improving our talents. It is by the assistance of the eye that we are enabled to discern many circumstances which demand the most scrupulous attention; and we are thus led to compare the results of certain facts and past events. In no occupation can these principles be more applicable than in laying down well-concerted rules to be observed in racing stables. However convenient the arrangement of the buildings may be, however good the horses may be which become the inmates, their powers can never be thoroughly drawn out without the strictest regularity and attention to their wants, their propensities, and their constitutions. When it is also remembered that the thoughtless and giddy hand of youth is constantly employed to supply their wants, nothing but steady adherence to rule and order can possibly accomplish the objects that are sought after.

The hour for commencing stable-work is not so early in these enlightened days of refinement as they formerly were: during the spring, autumn, and winter, six o'clock is the regular time to commence operations. In very hot weather during the summer, five o'clock, or even as early as four, may be the signal for unlocking the stable-door.

The first duty which each boy has to perform is to rack his horse's head up, and to throw the hood over his quarters; he then offers his horse half-a-dozen go-downs of water, but not more. The rack and manger are to be examined, and if any hay be left, it is to be cleared away and placed at the back of the stall, in order that the trainer or head lad may see the quantity that has been refused during the night. The manger being made quite clean, a feed of corn is to be given. The boys then proceed to gather up the dung in a basket provided for that purpose, which being done, the horse is turned over to the

* Dinniford's glove-brushes have lately been introduced into all first-rate stables, and have superseded the useof be common wooden-brush for race-horses. The invention is inestimable.

B B