Visiting, day by day, all the well-known sporting public-houses in London, picking up a little information here and making a few bets there, and always paying punctually when he lost, Davis speedily made a connection, and in a short time attracted a large number of customers. Being modest of manner and invariably civil, good fortune attended most of his efforts. Another feature in his favour was that he was liberal in offering odds, generally naming a point more than any of his competitors, so that he soon became "first favourite" among the betting men who were fond of backing their "fancy." Davis, in those days, betted for ready money only, and it was a maxim of his that "if you can lay all the horses, a point of additional odds is of no moment." "The horse which wins," he was wont to say, "brings you nothing, all the others do." In the beginning of his career, slow and sure was his motto; "ten pounds gained on each of five small races makes fifty." Passing on to a later period of his career, when his betting relations had extended to the patricians of the turf, Davis occasionally laid the odds to an almost incredible amount against all the horses entered in a race, and the greater favourite a horse became, the more willing was the "Leviathan" to bet against it; on many occasions the sums he stood to lose were really enormous in their amount. Davis, like other bookmakers, had his fortunate and his unfortunate races. The Derby, for instance, was one of the latter class of events; he was never fortunate in transactions entered into in connection with that race. Upon the occasion of Voltigeur winning the Blue Ribbon he stood to lose nearly £40,000 on his list accounts, as well as having to meet many liabilities for large sums in the ring and at Tattersall's consequent on the victory of that horse. The non-success of Hotspur in the great Epsom event cost him, he was wont to say, £50,000, while the failure of Barbarian involved the disbursement of about a plum; and in the year which was sacred to the victory of Teddington he dropped a mint of money; one cheque alone written out and paid away on the morning after the race was filled up for three times "five thou" (£15,000). Again, the Derby victory of Daniel O'Rourke necessitated his parting with £30,000, whilst one of Davis' bets on West Australian was paid to Mr. Bowes, the owner of that horse, in the shape of a draft on the London and Westminster Bank for the full amount.