So it is with your proprietors—­the little men who ride the great running horses.  There’s an impenetrable mystery about those little men—­they are, we know that, but we know not how.  Bill Scott is in the secret—­Chifney is well aware of it—­John Day could enlighten the world—­but they won’t!  They know the value of being “light characters”—­their fame is as “a feather,” and downey are they, even as the illustration of that fame.  They conspire together like so many little Frankensteins.  The world is treated with a very small proportion of very small jockeys; they never increase beyond a certain number, which proves they are not born in the regular way:  as the old ones drop off, the young ones just fill their places, and not one to spare.  Whoever heard of a “mob of jockeys,” a glut of “light-weights,” or even a handful of “feathers?”—­no one!

It’s like Freemasonry—­it’s an awful mystery!  Bill Scott knows all about the one, and the Duke of Sussex knows all about the other, but the uninitiated know nothing of either!  Jockeys are wonders—­so are their boots!  Crickets have as much calf, grasshoppers as much ostensible thigh; and yet these superhuman specimens of manufactured leather fit like a glove, and never pull the little gentlemen’s legs off.  That’s the extraordinary part of it; they never even so much as dislocate a joint!  Jockey bootmakers are wonderful men!  Jockeys ain’t men at all!

Look, look, look!  Oh, dear! do you see that little fellow, with his merry-thought-like looking legs, clinging round that gallant bright chesnut, thoro’bred, and sticking to his ribs as if he meant to crimp him for the dinner of some gourmand curious in horse-flesh!  There he is, screwing his sharp knees into the saddle, sitting well up from his loins, stretching his neck, curving his back, stiffening the wire-like muscles of his small arms, and holding in the noble brute he strides, as a saftey-valve controls the foaming steam; only loosing him at his very pleasure.

Look, look! there’s the grey filly, with the other made-to-measure feather on her back; do you notice how she has crawled up to the chesnut?  Mark, mark! his arms appear to be India-rubber!  Mercy on us, how they stretch! and the bridle, which looked just now like a solid bar of wrought iron, begins to curve!  See how gently he leans over the filly’s neck; while the chesnut’s rider turns his eyes, like a boiled lobster, almost to the back of his head!  Oh, he’s awake! he still keeps the lead:  but the grey filly is nothing but a good ’un.  Now, the Top-boots riding her have become excited, and commence tickling her sides with their flashing silver spurs, putting an extra foot into every bound.  She gains upon the chesnut!  This is something like a race!  The distance-post is reached!  The Top-boots on the grey are at work again.  Bravo! the tip of the white nose is beyond the level of the opposing boots!  Ten strides, and no change!  “She