We went on gloomily enough to the Waterloo
station, we passed the Regent Circus and saw
some very shy omnibuses with paper placards of
"Epsom" on them, empty and ghastly; there
was no noise, no excitement, no attempt at
joyousness! I remembered the Derbys of
bygone years, and looked dolefully at O'Hone, but
he had just bought a "c'rct card," and was
deep in statistical calculations.

There was no excitement at the station; we
took our places at the tail of a damp little
crowd, and took our tickets as though we were
going to Birmingham. There was a little excitement
on getting into the train of newly varnished
carriages destined for our conveyance, for the
damp little crowd had been waiting some time,
and made a feeble little charge as the train came
up. O'Hone and I seized the handle of a passing
door, wrenched it open, and jumped in. We were
followed by an old gentleman with a long stock
and a short temper, an affable stockbroker in a
perspiration, and two tremendous swells: in one
of whom I recognised the Earl of Wallsend, the
noble colliery proprietor. Our carriage is thus
legitimately full, but a ponderous woman of
masculine appearance and prehensile wrists,
hoists herself on to the step, and tumbles in
among us. This rouses one of the swells, who
remonstrates gently, and urges that there is no
room; but the ponderous woman is firm, and
not only takes 'vantage-ground herself, but
invites a male friend, called John, to join
her. "Coom in, Jan! Coom in, tell ye! Coom
in, Jan!"—but here the swell is adamant.
''No," says he, rigidly, "I'll be deed if John
shall come in! Police!" And when the guard
arrives, first John is removed, and then the lady,
and then the swell says with an air of relief,
"Good Heaven! did they think the carriage
was a den of wild beasts?"

So, through a quiet stealing rain, the train
proceeded, and landed us at last at a little damp
rickety station: an oasis of boards in a desert
of mud. Sliding down a greasy clay hill we
emerged upon the town of Epsom, and the
confluence of passengers by rail and by road. We,
who had come by the rail, were not lively, we
were dull and dreary, but up to this point tolerably
dry: in which we had the advantage of those
who had travelled by the road, and who were
not merely sulky and morose, but wet to their
skins. At the Spread Eagle, and at the King's
Head, stood the splashed drags with the steaming
horses, while their limp occupants tumbled
dismally off the roofs and sought temporary
consolation in hot brandy-and-water. A
dog-cart with two horses driven tandem-fashion, and
conveying four little gents, attempted to create
an excitement on its entry into the town. One of
the little gents on the back seat took a post-horn
from its long wicker case and tried to
blow it, but the rain, which had gradually been
collecting in the instrument, ran into his mouth
and choked him, while the leading horse, tempted
by the sight of some steaming hay in a trough,
turned sharp round and looked its driver
piteously in the face, refusing to be comforted,
or, what was more to the purpose, to move on,
until it had obtained refreshment. So, on
through the dull little town, where buxom
women looked with astonishment mixed with
pity at the passers-by, and where, at a
boot-shop, the cynical proprietor stood in the
doorway smoking a long clay pipe, and openly
condemned us with a fiendish laugh as "a pack of
adjective jackasses;" up the hill, on which the
churned yellow mud lay in afoot-deep bath, like
egg-flip, and beplastered us wretched
pedestrians whenever it was stirred by horses' hoofs or
carriage-wheels; skirting the edge of a
wheat-field (and a very large edge we made of it
before we had finished), the proprietor whereof
had erected a few feeble twigs by way of
barriers here and there—a delusion and a mockery
which the crowd had resented by tearing them
up and strewing them in the path; across a
perfect Slough of Despond situated between
two brick walls, too wide to jump, too terrible
to laugh at, a thing to be deliberately waded
through with turned-up trousers, and heart and
boots that sank simultaneously ; a shaking bog,
on the side of which stood fiendish boys armed
with wisps of straw, with which, for a
consideration, they politely proposed to clean your
boots.

I didn't want my boots cleaned. I was long
past any such attempt at decency. O'Hone was
equally reckless; and so, splashed to our eyes,
we made our way to the course. Just as we
reached the Grand Stand, a rather shabby
carriage dashed up to the door, and a howl of damp
welcome announced that Youthful Royalty had
arrived. Youthful Royalty, presently emerging
in a Mackintosh coat, with a cigar in its mouth,
proved so attractive that any progress in its
immediate vicinity was impossible; so O'Hone
and I remained tightly jammed up in a crowd,
the component parts of which were lower,
worse, and wickeder than I have ever seen.
Prize-fighters—not the aristocracy of the ring;
not those gentry who are "to be heard of,"
or whose money is ready; not those who are
always expressing, in print, their irrepressible
desire to do battle with Konky's Novice
at catch-weight, or who have an "Unknown"
perpetually walking about in great-coat, previous
to smashing the champion—not these, but
elderly flabby men with flattened noses and
flaccid skins and the seediest of great-coats
buttoned over the dirtiest of Jerseys;—racing
touts, thin wiry sharp-faced little men with
eyes strained and bleary from constant secret
watching of racers' gallops;—dirty, battered
tramps, sellers of cigar-lights and c'rect cards;
—pickpockets, shifty and distrustful, with no
hope of a harvest from their surroundings;—
and "Welshers," who are the parody on
Tattersall's and the Ring, who are to the Jockey Club
and the Enclosure what monkeys are to men—
poor pitiful varlets in greasy caps and tattered
coats, whose whole wardrobe would be sneered
at in Holywell-street or Rag Fair, and who yet
are perpetually bellowing, in hoarse ragged
tones, "I'll bet against the field!" "I'll bet