“While at Margate, Mr and Mrs Crouch, and myself, were staying at the Hotel, kept by a man whose manners were as free and easy as any I have ever met with. He was proverbial for his _nonchalance_, and a perfect master of the art of making out a bill. One day, Johnstone dined with us, and we drank our usual quantum of wine. In the course of the evening, our bashful host, who, amongst other good qualities, was a notorious gambler, forced upon us some Pink Champagne, which he wished us to give our opinions of. My friend Jack Johnstone, who never was an enemy to the juice of the grape, took such copious draughts of the sparkling beverage, that his eyes began to twinkle, and his speech became somewhat of the thickest: my honest host, on perceiving this, thinking, I suppose, to amuse him, entered our room with a backgammon table and dice, and asked Johnstone if he would like to play a game. Johnstone, at that time, was considered fond of play, of which circumstance mine host was perfectly aware. Mrs Crouch and I earnestly entreated Jack to go to bed, but we could not prevail upon him to do so; he whispered me, saying, ‘You shall see how I will serve the fellow for his impudence’ and to it they went. The end of the business was, that before they parted, Johnstone won nearly two hundred pounds, and I retired to bed, delighted to see the biter bit.” Of another Kelly, or rather O’Kelly (the Colonel who was owner of the famous race horse, Eclipse), Harcourt[36] tells some stories, and, indeed the book is a mine of anecdotes, some of which I reproduce:— “Dennis O’Kelly was much attached to Ascot, where his horses occupied him by day, and the hazard table by night. “Here it was, that repeatedly turning over a QUIRE OF BANK NOTES, a gentleman asked him ‘what he was in want of?’ when he replied, ‘he was looking for _a little one_.’ The enquirer said ‘he could accommodate him, and desired to know for what sum?’ When he answered ‘A FIFTY, or something of _that sort_, just to set the _Caster_.’ At this time it was supposed he had seven or eight thousand pounds in notes in his hand, but no one for less than a _hundred_. He always threw with great success; and, when he held the box, was seldom known to refuse throwing for _any sum_ that the company chose to set him; and, when ‘out,’ was always as liberal in _setting the Caster_, and preventing stagnation of _trade at the table_, which, from the great property always about him, it was his good fortune very often to deprive of the last _floating guinea_, when the _box_, of course, became _dormant_ for want of a single adventurer.