Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/522

 514 me, the remainder of the sum booked respectively to C. and self, by Messrs. A. and B. we book to you.

I am, &c., &c.

To Mr. Philip Spott, Newmarket.

By this brief and business-like communication, Phil Spott was apprised that if Munster won the Derby, Messrs. A. and B.—or rather Mr. R, for whom they had betted as agents—would have to pay him, through the writer of the above letter, a large sum of money; they having been, of course, perfectly unconscious as to the real person with whom they were betting.

In less than half an hour after the perusal of this letter a mounted express was on the road to Huntingdon, with directions to proceed onward along the main north road till he overtook Munster and the lad, for whom he conveyed a letter, in which he was directed to retrace his steps, and to join the rest of the cavalcade now travelling southwards from Newmarket for the neighbourhood of Epsom. To these orders of course the lad immediately attended.

The startling intelligence of the horse’s return was soon made public,—to the joy of some, and to the sorrow of others, among the most doleful of whom was our old acquaintance R; for the natural consequence of this movement was, that the horse (whose position in the betting, in consequence of his supposed return to the north, had become insignificant,) was immediately advanced not only to his old price but to a higher one than he had ever been at before, which compelled R either to run the risk of losing the enormous sums he had laid against him or to ease his difficulty by reversing his operations and backing the horse at a loss. Our shrewd friend, Phil, knew full well which course an old stager like R would pursue; that he durst not “stand to be shot at” (as the phrase is), but that he would scramble out of the hole into which he thought he had pushed others, but into which he had fallen himself, as speedily as possible. And accordingly this was the course which he, like the prudent man he was, did pursue by at once requesting his agents who had betted against Munster to back him for a sufficient amount to cover that which he had betted against him under the impression that he was not intended to start, and, to simplify the settling, especially to endeavour to deal with those persons to whom they had betted the odds. In this they found no difficulty, for Phil—who said “he always travelled in the Safety Coach”—had instructed his commissioners in good time to take advantage of the horse’s improved price in the market, and to be sure to accommodate those with whom they had bets about him in the event of their wishing to “hedge.”

These instructions being attended to on both sides, the result was, that if Munster won, Phil Spott would have to receive from R (through agents on either side) a considerable sum of money, and if Munster did not win a smaller sum, so that in either case he now had Mr. R fast by the leg.

The Derby Day arrived, and Phil appeared mounted on Munster in a blue jacket. After the usual preliminary canters before the stand, the coloured troop assemble at the starting-post. “They’re off!” cry a million voices. And in the course of three minutes the million voices again raise unearthly shouts as the horses near the winning-post. “The Favourite wins!” “The Favourite is beat!” “Munster wins!” “Munster is beat!” “Munster wins!” A desperate, long-continued struggle—and the race is over. The shoutings subside into a buzz as of myriads of Brobdignag blue-bottles. “Who’s won?” “Who’s won?” shout thousands of voices. “Munster,” is the reply.

“Who’s won, Mr. R?” inquired an eager speculator of that now crest-fallen worthy. “Did Lord B win?”

“No!” growled the respondent. “The old devil in blue!”

R saw he had been done, said nothing, but with many anathemas not loud but deep paid the money on the settling-day, and shortly afterwards removed his horse Gosport. Phil Spott, having meanwhile recommended his informant change of air, and that, as his moother appeared so anxious about him, he had better take up his residence with her for the future.

Phil pocketed old R’s losings, and with much inward exultation and a knowing wink to his friends, said:

“I told you the spice-nuts would not agree with him.”

That great moralist, Mr. Samuel Weller said: “Pork-pies were werry good things when they wer’n’t made of puppies, and you know’d the young ooman as made ’em.” So I will append to my tale a moral—Never eat spice-nuts without you know who made ’em.

S. W.

“Cœlum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.” This is one of those popular fallacies which provoke discussion. Discussion as to whether the writer was really in earnest, or whether so shrewd an observer of men and minds as Horace could have perchance made a mistake. Or is it possible that the poet’s own state of feeling is here represented, and that he retired to the Isles of Greece, like the stricken deer, to nurse an ill-requited attachment? We know his vigorous grasp of the sentimental, even at the end of eight lustra, and can only account for the declaration of so exceptional a case in the form of a general proposition, by supposing him to have been an unwilling slave of the tender passion. When does a man leave these shores, which are redolent of professional duties, without shaking off old habits of thought, and clothing himself in a new suit fitted for the occasion? It is because I change not only the atmosphere, but all sympathy with it; because I become brighter and fresher every league I progress; because I forget letters, books, printers’-devils, and proof-sheets,—that I trust myself once a year to the horrors of sea-sickness, and the associations of a cabin, a basin, and a steward. The simile may be a little strained, but it is for this reason that I appreciate the feelings of Conrad as he neared his vessel and saw “his blood-red flag aloft”—that I understand how—

Fire in his glance, and wildness in his breast,

He feels of all his former self possest,