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The New Tattersall's-Portrait of Mr. R. Tattersall .

Emperor

"Oxford Wins!"

Big Ben

A Cast in the Pool

"There he sat, and, as I thought, expounding the law and the prophets, until on drawing a little nearer, I found he was only expatiating on the merits of a brown horse."-BRACEBRIDGE HALL.

WAY BILL:-December Difficulties-Obituary-The late Mr. Bethell, of Rise-News from the Kennels-A Rumour from Hampshire-The Brighton Harriers-The Doncaster Spring Meeting-The Past Racing Season-Foals of the Season-Luck of Sires-Cricket Crabsticks.

s compared with the story maker, the sporting writer is at a complete discount every Christmas-tide.' He has no sensation elements to fall back upon. His more fortunate brothers and sisters can do absolutely what they like with a stroke of their pen. They can lose a man in the snows of Yorkshire, and pop him inside a phantom coach two inches thick in mildew, with steaming greys, and five corpses (coachman, guard, and inside passengers included). They can invite him to a Parisian doctor's banquet, to meet a party who are all tired of life, and come specially to be poisoned; and then spirit him off when the work is only half-done, to be rallied back to life and love, through a pannel door, while the rest of the party are yelling at him like mad. They make no bones whatever of causing a baronet to give up his hunters, and tell the house-steward to keep her ladyship in coals and pocket-money while he "goes to Florence," alias sitting with loaded pistols before him in a ruined house at Chelsea, and prowling up to his own pheasant covers once a month disguised as a wood-cutter. If a young clergyman wants a young wife, and her mother is deranged and won't hear of it, they can shut up the young lady secretly in her mother's inner padded chamber, and keep her there on an opium and laudanum diet unknown to her father, clergyman No. 2, for nearly a year, till clergyman No. 1 is married. In short, if they have got an awkward character, they can make him burn himself in a library, or tumble him into molten lead, or eat him up with rats, or as Sim Templeman used to say of Cossack, "just place him where you like." The sporting writer has no such resources. Racing is over. Frost has stopped the hunting and the steeplechasing; and he has nothing left for it but to fall back on his faithful Weatherby and his Ruff, and make what he can, in his need, out of the past and the future. The death of Mr. Bethell, of Rise, whose predecessor had, we believe, the Holderness Hounds, and the lushy Jack Robinson as his huntsman, calls up a curious reminiscence, which the late Mr. Tom Hodgson used to tell with great glee. He and an ex M.F.H. (still living) were dining with a jovial lot of scarlets at the "Rose and Crown," Beverley, when the waiter entered, and begged them in the most sepulchral and awe-stricken tones to be a little quieter, because "Mr. Bethell, of Rise, a very particular man," had retired to rest in the next room. On hearing this, up started the baronet, and said " By Jove, Tom, I should like to see this Mr. Bethell, of Rise; I've heard of him all my life.” Up jumped the renowned "Tom" on the spur of the moment, and taking the candle, led the way, gave a thundering rap at the door, which was not bolted, threw back the curtain, and disclosed the little man sitting bolt upright in his nightcap, and a state of utter bewilderment at the irruption. Then turning the candle-light full on his fea

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