hundreds, so that the municipal authorities, justly apprehensive of a
row, concentrated the cohorts of their police, and swore in no end of
specials as a reserve.

The great event came off duly, a fair instance of the "glorious
uncertainty" which backers of horses execrate and ring-men adore. All
the favorites were out of the race early. Our best man, Barlowe, the
centre of many hopes, and carrying a heavy investment of Oxford money,
was floored at the second double post-and-rail. The Cambridge cracks,
too, by divers casualties, were soon disposed of. At the last fence, an
Oxford man was leading by sixty yards; but it was his maiden race, and
he lost his head when he found himself looking like a winner so near
home. Instead of taking the stake-and-bound at the weakest place, he
rode at the strongest; his horse swerved to the gap, took the fence
sideways, and came down heavily into the ditch of the winning field. The
representative of Cambridge, who came next, riding a good steady hunter,
not fast, but safe at his fences, cantered in by himself. I remember he
was so bewildered by his unexpected victory that one of his backers had
to hold him fast in the saddle, or he would have dismounted before
riding to scale, and so lost the stakes.

Well, the race was over and the laurels lost, so we had nothing to do
but pay and look pleasant, and then adjourn to the inevitable banquet at
"The George." There was little to distinguish the proceedings from the
routine of such festivals. The winners stood Champagne, and the losers
drank it--to any amount. The accidents of flood and field were discussed
over and over again; and, I believe, every man of the twenty-three who
had ridden that day could and did prove, to his own entire satisfaction,
that he must have won but for some freak of fortune totally unavoidable,
and defying human calculation.