This was by no means the case. It was just what a man might have expected to have found a great sporting exchange and auction mart, of horses and carriages, to have been, in a great city like London, had he been merely told that such was the object of the place, and then left to imagine the scene. It was, as I have before said, a mixed and motley crowd; and must necessarily be so, where agents attend to bid for their principals, where servants are in waiting upon their masters, and above all, where the ingress is open to every one.
It is, however, unquestionably the resort of gentlemen. In a great and rich country like this, there must, unavoidably, be a Tattersall’s; and the wonder is, not that it is not better, but that it is not infinitely worse. Lake all striking pictures, it had strong lights and shades. Those who have suffered, are apt to retaliate; and a man who has been duped, too often thinks he has a right to make reprisals. Tattersall’s, therefore, is not without its privateers. Many persons of rank and character patronize sporting, from a patriotic but mistaken notion, that it is to the turf alone the excellence of the English horse is attributable.
One person of this description, whom I saw there for a short time, I had the pleasure of knowing before; and from him I learned many interesting anecdotes of individuals whom he pointed out as having been once well known about town, but whose attachment to gambling had effected their ruin. Personal stories of this kind are, however, not within the scope of this work.
As soon as we entered, Mr. Slick called my attention to the carriages which were exhibited for sale, to their elegant shape and “beautiful fixins,” as he termed it; but ridiculed, in no measured terms, their enormous weight. “It is no wonder,” said he, “they have to get fresh hosses here every ten miles, and travellin’ costs so much, when the carriage alone is enough to kill beasts. What would Old Bull say, if I was to tell him of one pair of hosses carryin’ three or four people, forty or fifty miles a-day, day in and day out, hand runnin’ for a fortnight? Why, he’d either be too civil to tell me it was a lie, or bein’ afeerd I’d jump down his throat if he did, he’d sing dumb, and let me see by his looks, he thought so, though.
“I intend to take the consait out of these chaps, and that’s a fact. If I don’t put the leak into ‘em afore I’ve done with them, my name ain’t Sam Slick, that’s a fact. I’m studyin’ the ins and the outs of this place, so as to know what I am about, afore I take hold; for I feel kinder skittish about my men. Gentlemen are the lowest, lyinest, bullyinest, blackguards there is, when they choose to be; ‘specially if they have rank as well as money. A thoroughbred cheat, of good blood, is a clipper, that’s a fact. They ain’t right up-and-down, like a cow’s tail, in their dealin’s; and they’ve got accomplices, fellers that will lie for ‘em like any thing, for the honour of their company; and bettin’, onder such circumstances, ain’t safe.
“But, I’ll tell you what is, if you have got a hoss that can do it, and no mistake: back him, hoss agin hoss, or what’s safer still, hoss agin time, and you can’t be tricked. Now, I’ll send for Old Clay, to come in Cunard’s steamer, and cuss ‘em they ought to bring over the old hoss and his fixins, free, for it was me first started that line. The way old Mr. Glenelg stared, when I told him it was thirty-six miles shorter to go from Bristol to New York by the way of Halifax, than to go direct warn’t slow. It stopt steam for that hitch, that’s a fact, for he thort I was mad. He sent it down to the Admiralty to get it ciphered right, and it took them old seagulls, the Admirals a month to find it out.
“And when they did, what did they say? Why, cuss ‘em, says they, ‘any fool knows that.’ Says I, ‘If that’s the case you are jist the boys then that ought to have found it out right off at oncet.’
“Yes, Old Clay ought to go free, but he won’t; and guess I am able to pay freight for him, and no thanks to nobody. Now, I’ll tell you what, English trottin’ is about a mile in two minutes and forty-seven seconds, and that don’t happen oftener than oncet in fifty years, if it was ever done at all, for the English brag so there is no telling right. Old Clay can do his mile in two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. He has done that, and I guess he could do more. I have got a car, that is as light as whalebone, and I’ll bet to do it with wheels and drive myself. I’ll go in up to the handle, on Old Clay. I have a hundred thousand dollars of hard cash made in the colonies, I’ll go half of it on the old hoss, hang me if I don’t, and I’ll make him as well knowd to England as he is to Nova Scotia.
“I’ll allow him to be beat at fust, so as to lead ‘em on, and Clay is as cunnin’ as a coon too, if he don’t get the word g’lang (go along) and the Indgian skelpin’ yell with it, he knows I ain’t in airnest, and he’ll allow me to beat him and bully him like nothin’. He’ll pretend to do his best, and sputter away like a hen scratchin’ gravel, but he won’t go one mossel faster, for he knows I never lick a free hoss.
“Won’t it be beautiful? How they’ll all larf and crow, when they see me a thrashin’ away at the hoss, and then him goin’ slower, the faster I thrash, and me a threatenin’ to shoot the brute, and a talkin’ at the tip eend of my tongue like a ravin’ distracted bed bug, and offerin’ to back him agin, if they dare, and planken down the pewter all round, takin’ every one up that will go the figur’, till I raise the bets to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. When I get that far, they may stop their larfin’ till next time, I guess. That’s the turn of the fever—that’s the crisis—that’s my time to larf then.