Jorrocks' Jaunts and JollitiesSurtees, Robert Smith
General
Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities
Surtees, Robert Smith
England -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction; Hunting stories
"Why, nothing in particular; only, when there's neither hunting nor
shooting going on, what is a man to do with himself?--I'm sure you'd
despise me if I were to go fishing." "True," observed Mr. Jorrocks
somewhat subdued, and jingling the silver in his breeches-pocket.
"Fox-'unting is indeed the prince of sports. The image of war, without
its guilt, and only half its danger. I confess that I'm a martyr to
it--a perfect wictim--no one knows wot I suffer from my ardour.--If ever
I'm wisited with the last infirmity of noble minds, it will be caused by
my ingovernable passion for the chase. The sight of a saddle makes me
sweat. An 'ound makes me perfectly wild. A red coat throws me into a
scarlet fever. Never throughout life have I had a good night's rest
before an 'unting morning. But werry little racing does for me; Sadler's
Wells is well enough of a fine summer evening--especially when they
plump the clown over head in the New River cut, and the ponies don't
misbehave in the Circus,--but oh! Newmarket's a dreadful place, the
werry name's a sickener. I used to hear a vast about it from poor Will
Softly of Friday Street. It was the ruin of him--and wot a fine business
his father left him, both wholesale and retail, in the tripe and
cow-heel line--all went in two years, and he had nothing to show at the
end of that time for upwards of twenty thousand golden sovereigns, but a
hundredweight of children's lamb's-wool socks, and warrants for thirteen
hogsheads of damaged sherry in the docks. No, take my adwice, and have
nothing to say to them--stay where you are, or, if you're short of swag,
come to Great Coram Street, where you shall have a bed, wear-and-tear
for your teeth, and all that sort of thing found you, and, if Saturday's
a fine day, I'll treat you with a jaunt to Margate."
"You are a regular old trump," said the Yorkshireman, after listening
attentively until Mr. Jorrocks had exhausted himself, "but, you see,
you've never been at Newmarket, and the people have been hoaxing you
about it. I can assure you from personal experience that the people
there are quite as honest as those you meet every day on 'Change,
besides which, there is nothing more invigorating to the human
frame--nothing more cheering to the spirits, than the sight and air of
Newmarket Heath on a fine fresh spring morning like the present. The
wind seems to go by you at a racing pace, and the blood canters up and
down the veins with the finest and freest action imaginable. A stranger
to the race-course would feel, and almost instinctively know, what turf
he was treading, and the purpose for which that turf was intended".
"There's a magic in the web of it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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