Wasting regimen varies according to taste or the constitution of the man. As some of them say, "What is meat and drink to one jockey is poison to another." Frank Butler's usual diet consisted of a pint of champagne and a slice of dry toast after each walk, while after each race he partook of a small portion of gruel in which was mixed a little brandy. A Yorkshire jockey, called Jacques--it is not on record whether or not he was, like Shakespeare's hero, a melancholy man--once reduced his weight no less than seventeen pounds in twenty-four hours. Three times within that period he walked from the grand stand at Newcastle to Gosforth Hall, a distance of three miles, making a tour of eighteen miles in all. Jacques was a famous and artful waster. His diet on the occasion under notice was a little tea with gin mixed in it, which caused him to perspire freely; a dry biscuit and a poached egg served in vinegar was all the food he took in twenty-four hours. Sam Darling, another olden-time jockey, walked on an average about five hundred miles a year in order to keep himself down to racing weight. Some jockeys used long ago to waste by means of hard riding, clad, of course, in heavy woollen garments; others preferred to do their penance in their walks from course to course, thus killing the proverbial two birds with one stone. John Osborne once relieved himself of seven pounds of superfluous flesh in one of these walks. Other horsemen have done the same. Many of the jockeys of sixty years ago were as good pedestrians as equestrians. "Nimrod" tells us that the old system of wasting was as follows: "With jockeys in high repute it lasted from about three weeks before Easter to the end of October, but a week or ten days are quite sufficient for a rider to reduce himself from his natural weight to sometimes a stone and a half below it. For breakfast they take a small piece of bread and butter with tea in moderation; dinner is taken very sparingly--a very small piece of pudding and less meat; and, when fish is to be obtained, neither the one nor the other is allowed. Wine and water is the usual beverage, in proportion of one pint to two of water. Tea in the afternoon, with little or no bread and butter, and no supper. After breakfast, having sufficiently loaded themselves with clothes, that is, with five or six waistcoats, two coats, and as many pair of breeches, a severe walk is taken, from ten to fifteen miles. After their return home, dry clothes are substituted for those that are wet with perspiration, and, if they are much fatigued, some of them lie down for an hour before dinner, after which no strong exercise is taken.