Hark! ‘The foremost wins!’ ‘Rob Boy’s a “teaser”!’ ‘Mervilly’s lost!’ ‘Flash Man’s a brilliant failure!’
Lost? A palpitating lie!
’Send me a cropper!’ exclaimed Constable, a ‘clipping’ jock who had landed many a mount. ‘Send me a cropper, if you like, but “plant” me a winner!’
The blue filly answered with lightning spontaneity. Game to the last, Constable, a great Pickwick in his mouth, coaxed a final effort out of her. The delirium of pace was upon him. ‘Go in a perisher!’
On came the trio—on, until one last convulsive impulse of the outstretched limbs, and—hark! The cry has changed. ‘Mervilly wins!’
A thousand jewelled hands hold forth bouquets of hissing eau de Cologne. And Constable, true to the canons of his Order, ‘runs her in.’
A cry as of the disappointed, the desperate, or the d—d, went out over the ghastly fens; seemed to reel from many a gallant ‘plunger’ in anticipation of an approaching ‘weigh-in.’ Next to first was Second; Better Last than Never, whose dominant instinct it was to lose, third.
There was much wisdom after the event. Two minutes eight seconds! A man on a bicycle might have done it in less time!
Cyril. (James Silvester.)
The World November 12, 1879.