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TOPS!  TOPS!!  TOPS!!!

Derby!—­Epsom!—­Ledger!—­Spring Summer, Autumn Meetings—­Miles, Half-miles—­T.Y.C.—­Hurdles, Heats, names, weights, colours of the riders—­jockies, jackets,—­Dead Heats—­sweats—­distances—­trainings—­scales—­caps, and all—­what would you be without Top Boots?  What! and echo answers—­nothing!

Ay, worse than nothing—­a chancery suit without money—­an Old Bailey culprit without an alibi—­a debtor without an excuse—­a new play without a titled author—­a manager without impudence—­a thief without a character—­a lawyer without a wig—­or a Guy Faux without matches!

Tops, you must be “made to measure.”  Wellingtons, Hessians, Bluchers, Ankle-Jacks, and Highlows, can be chosen from, fitted, and tried on; but you must be measured for, lasted, back-strapped, top’d, wrinkled and bottomed, according to order.

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.