NEWMARKET-OUT OF SEASON.

ELEVEN O'clock on a dull Friday morning. Scene, a large, well-lighted room looking on to a crowded London thoroughfare. Newspapers of all classes and all countries scattered about in profusion. Portraits of racehorses, of trotting horses, of famous jockeys, of crack pugilists, of redoubtable scullers, adorn the walls. Slips,' unread proofs, unexamined copy litter the tables. There is a constant hum of question and answer, a never-ceasing coming and going; writers and compositors, printers' devils, and men from over the way with pewter pots jostle each other on the stairs and in the passages, and telegraph lads rush in and out incessantly. A great wicker basket full of letters just opened is a conspicuous object in the apartment first alluded to. And such letters! Here are five-and-twenty demands for Kitchener's lowest riding weight, and a dozen more to know whether Chandler ever jumped thirty-nine feet. Some one is anxious to be told when Tibthorpe was re-christened Sir Tatton Sykes; another asks the number of acres in Yorkshire and letters in the Bible. Card queries, some complicated to a degree, some childish in their simplicity. Abusive epistles from people whose questions have not been answered, or have been answered unsatisfactorily. Complimentary letters (these very few and far between) from individuals who want something in return for their fair words. 'Flimsey' sent up from the country on the chance of lineageImportant Trespass Case,' or Meeting of the River Brawl Fishery Commission.' A fictitious account of a foot race at Wimbledon, a libellous attack on a Master of Hounds, a scheme for breaking the Ring, and another for breaking blood stock. A letter from a gentleman requesting the editor to procure for him a lucrative situation as clerk to a bookmaker, and to make haste about it; a letter from a lady desiring the carte de visite portrait of the newspaper's poetical prophet, to be forwarded to her by return of post. A letter from Germany from an enterprising breeder who wants a Stockwell stallion, sound, and a winner of good races— would not object to give forty pounds for him. A letter from a village in the Himalayas pointing out that a letter was turned upside down in a number of the paper five months back; a letter from Japan, with the postage unpaid, containing an account of a football match. A New York letter, dated The Bowery, in which the writer announces his intention of dropping in upon the_editor at an early, but unmentioned date, and giving him goss.' Demands for temporary pecuniary assistance from people whose father had once known a man whose brother had written a letter to the paper; demands for money from folks whose copy has never been used, from folks whose copy has never been received, from folks whose copy very possibly never existed. Strange misspelt scrawls from the Sheffield, and Birmingham, and Pottery districts, the purport of which none but a necromancer could divine; scrawls, likewise

misspelt, from those who sit in high places, and wear fine linen, and should therefore know better.

The above form an infinitesimally small part of the incongruous mixture that the Friday morning's post has brought in. Is it to be wondered at that the narrator of this authentic record should lean back in his chair, gaze with a mournful and bewildered air on the mass of labour spread before him, and wish himself a negro in the Blue Mountains, a hansom cab-driver, a billiard marker, a bakedpotato man, anything, in fact, but what he really is.

Well, there is no help for it, the work must be got through; so let us commence by knocking off thirty or forty of the easier questions. What is number one? Oh! Some twenty, or it may be five-and-twenty years ago, there appeared in your columns, amongst the answers to correspondents, one addressed to someone who signed himself A. B. It was to the effect that A. B. Iwas an ass. You would greatly oblige me if you let me know 'what the subject of the query was, and who A. B. really——’ Here we are interrupted by a sharp knocking at the door, and, unbidden, there enters the room an ex-prizefighter, bullet-headed, crop-eared, thick-set, truculent, brutal. The ex-pugilist carries a heavy bludgeon under his arm and smells of ram. The expugilist appears to have caught cold, for his voice is thick and husky, and to have caught something else too, for there is a 'mouse' under his right eye. By a great effort the ex-pugilist contorts his face into what is meant for an affable smile, and asks if-let us say-Mr. Jones is in the way? We reply, affably also, that Mr. Jones is not in the way; on receipt of which intelligence the ex-pugilist throws off the mask, dismisses the affable smile 'altogether, and says he wishes Mr. Jones was consigned to a place of endless torment, and that he is adjectived if he does not wait until he comes back. Warned that this cannot be permitted, he withdraws; but even as his footsteps die away there is a surliness of sound about them that induces us to think that he is still wishing that Mr. Jones may go to a warm place, and is inclined also to assign us to that gentleman as a travelling companion.

Now then for another turn at the questions. H'm-this choice little document appears to be from one of our friends of the Pottery districts alluded to above. 'i ham hask to right to you Deside a bet When a public house is shut up, and the master put a man in 'the house, will someone take of the master, hand is the man the 'house Won. Not in the man Name Landlord or Servant, my Name.-G. W.' Not very easy to decide off hand; let us try again.i ham hask--- Here the thread is again broken by a tremendous uproar in the adjoining room, where a select party of peds, who have been clearly convicted of a most barefaced barney,' are abusing the referee for having decided against their champion. Peace once more restored, things for a while go on swimmingly. Puer is told that upwards often means more than ten; and X. Y. Z. learns that Mr. Bright never fought a duel with Feargus O'Connor.

Altogether there is such a brilliant chance of getting through with this portion of our duty before one o'clock, that we are beginning to feel quite cheerful; when behold the door opens again, and the ex-pugilist once more lurches heavily into the room. The smell of rum is more pronounced than on the occasion of his previous visit, and his cold appears to have become worse. Propping himself against a chair, he demands, in the tone of a raven afflicted with quinsy, whether Mr. Jones is in the way. We tell him affably that he is not in the way. The E. P. stares fixedly, breathes stertorously, and screwing himself gradually round, as if he moved on a pivot, slowly staggers away. He is past the stage of imprecations now, and a dreadful longing seizes us, that in crossing the street for more rum, he may be knocked down by one of Pickford's vans, and taken-not seriously hurt, you know-to the Charing Cross Hospital.

The day is getting on so rapidly that assistance must be called in to finish the questions, for there are abundance of important matters to be attended to; and now the knocking has become so incessant, that the door might be taken for that hollow beech tree on which Mr. Moore's woodpecker committed those never-ending assaults. A small boy with a shrill voice ravenous in his demands for copy. A telegram. A message from below stairs that we are wanted immediately. A message from above stairs that we are wanted there at once. A message from room on the same floor that there is something wrong, and we must see to it without delay. More copy wanted. A man with a grievance who has made a mistake and come to the wrong office, and tries in consequence to pick a quarrel with us. Another with a red nose, who says that his business will not brook a moment's delay, and who, on being admitted, tries to sell us some newly-invented and very remarkable steel pens. More copy wanted. The voice of the ex-pugilist again; but we are too wary for him this time, and he is hustled down stairs amongst an avalanche of descending patrons of the road, the river, Hackney Wick grounds, and bearers of beer cans. A message from a contributor, who had been specially relied on for a 'column,' to say that his sister's nose has been bleeding, and that he cannot write the article. More copy wanted. A very dirty boy with three carrier pigeons confined in a brown-paper bag, against which they flap their poor wings unceasingly, cooing the while in such melancholy sort as to threaten distraction to all listeners. He says they are to be left till called for. A friend from the country, who wants us to procure him-we can do it so easily, he knows-a box at a newlyopened theatre; and he would be glad, too, if we could spare a few minutes to show him the working of the machinery in the printing room, and, by-the-by, there is a young friend of his who has quite a turn for sporting literature, and has written a littie thing in the style We decline of Amphion, which he will thank us to glance over.

to glance over it, so he remembers that he has no change, and, borrowing half-a-crown (cheerfully parted with) for cab-hire, he

vanishes, jerking back as he goes the Parthian shaft, that he will look us up again in the afternoon. A demand for more copNo! it can be borne no longer, so seizing our hat, breaking through a crowd of clamorous visitors, heedless of remonstrance, entreaty, reproach, we dart swiftly out and go over to see how they are betting at the Club.

So the day speeds on, a thousand and one worries, trifling enough in themselves, but right formidable taken en masse, combining to reduce the unfortunate sufferer from them to the lowest depths of exhaustion and misery. Some hours must yet elapse ere the welcome signal be given that all is right.' There are slips galore to be covered with comments on horses, and men, and things, written so hurriedly, that ere the ink is dry they are whipped away by anxious fingers and put in hand.' There is the dinner to be bolted, that taken in a picnicking and savage fashion always disagrees with us. There are the pleasant liquors to be avoided, lest they should play havoc with the brain; there is the longing for just that one cigar to be wrestled with and overthrown. Gradually the needful work is accomplished, the last proof corrected, the last look round given to see that nothing has been forgotten, and then the writer sinks helplessly down in a chair, and tells his astonished chief that unless he has a run out of town, nature must inevitably succumb, and that come what will next morning's earliest train shall bear him to Newmarket.

Wearily the long flight of stairs is descended, a hansom hailed from the stand, a cigar lighted, the enjoyment of which has been so long delayed that all relish for the weed has departed, and we are whirled off home, nursing a dim conviction that a heavy, doubled-up figure reclining in a porch close by is that of the ex-pugilist, constant to the last in his search after Mr. Jones.

With the grey break of the morning we are up again, to enjoy the luxuries of dressing and of packing a portmanteau by gaslight, of rousing a household to wakefulness and fury by demanding hot water and breakfast at an unearthly hour; and down we bowl once more along the familiar iron road that takes us to cur loved Newmarket.

What need to speak of a journey so often described? Like all journeys undertaken under similar circumstances, it is an uncomfortable one. We are tortured by the conviction of having left behind us something of importance (a conviction speedily realised), and sleepy and rather cross. People in the carriage bore us by wanting to talk, and when subsequently we try to talk to them, they are sullen and confine themselves to monosyllables.

It is a decided relief to reach Cambridge and catch a glimpse of the cheery face of Mr. Fisher, to whom we hereby, in the name of all turf voyageurs, wish every success in the new path of life on which he is about to enter; and a greater relief still, when (how widely different from the fierce struggle on our last visit!*) we * Vide Baily's Magazine' for November, 1868.

quietly take our seat in an omnibus at the door of Newmarket Station, and after sundry tackings, stoppages, and collisions, are eventually landed in the White Hart Yard.

What remembrance is it that comes back so suddenly as we gaze up and down the long street-as different in its aspect of to-day from what we have known before, as is light from darkness! Where have we previously seen the uneven pavement, the ill-shaped houses, the contracted shop fronts? What is it that we find so familiar in the almost solemn quiet, in the windows from which no faces gaze, in the air, the light, the whole being of the place? Back rush our thoughts, and before us rises a vision, so distinct and clear, of just such a November morning years and years ago, when we looked out upon just so deserted a street, where the silence was profound, and the grass grew between the paving stones. It is far away in the high Yorkshire land that the little hill town lies of which we speak, but the family resemblance is as striking as if they lay side by side; and though at such season a stranger might, as we do now, gaze forth in either of them and see the face of no man, an inspiration would not fail to tell him that each town was pre-eminently of the horse horsey.

Sherry? Certainly, an admirable thought; we will turn into the old-accustomed bar, so often visited when the midnight hour was at hand, and the boys,' somewhat in their cups, were beginning to be noisy and argumentative, and inclined to bet heavily, and occasionally a little at random. Bless and save us, we should scarcely have known the place again! There is no need to-day to effect an entrance by sheer force, elbowing a passage through a mob of bawling bookmakers and bemuddled backers. The little room that has so often rung with the stentorian voice of the Fairfield squire is to-day as still as a forest's heart in summer time; and as we stoop to pat the pretty dog upon the hearthrug, there is, as we live, no sound to be heard save the ticking of the clock!

Out again into the quaint, straggling, old yard, and so for a stroll towards the Mill Hill. Heyday! what is all this; why, here we have come down to Newmarket for a couple of days' quiet, and, behold, we have fallen upon the fag end of the fair! However, there is not much cause for disturbance, for the shows-those abominations in the sight of the thoughtful-have all gone. There is no clang of villanous brass bands to wake us from our day dreams, and no shrill voices from rickety platforms invite us to walk up.' A dozen years have elapsed since we last saw a fair. It was in the good Saxon land that we then wandered, amidst long rows of booths, and past shops teeming with buyers and sellers of all nations. It was in Leipzic market-place that we rubbed shoulders with Polish and Russian Jews, and crafty-faced Greeks, and grim-visaged Turks, and hard-headed Swedes when; the talk was of diamonds, and hides, of pipe-sticks and caviare, of Manchester prints, and Siberian ermine skins. Newmarket, it must be admitted, is a little behind Leipzic in the value of its merchandise, and the variety of its attractions.