mach;--and men, with wooden legs, and brass virls at the end of them,
playing on the fiddle,--and a bear that roared, and danced on its hind
feet, with a muzzled mouth,--and Punch and Polly,--and puppie-shows, and
more than I can tell,--when up came the horses to the starting-post. I
shall never forget the bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin
tied round his head, with the flaps fleeing at his neck; and his
coat-tails were curled up into a big hump behind; it was so tight
buttoned ye would not think he could have breathed. His corduroy
trowsers (such like as I have often since made to growing callants) were
tied round his ankles with a string; and he had a rusty spur on one shoe,
which I saw a man take off to lend him. Save us! how he pulled the
beast's head by the bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he
tried a canter! The second one had on a black velvet hunting-cap, and
his coat stripped. I wonder he was not feared of cold, his shirt being
like a riddle, and his nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he
was a brave lad; and sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in
taking over sharp a turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was
holding the post, was made to coup the creels, and got a bloody
nose.--And but the last was a wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg
as an eel. Up and down he went; and up and down philandered the beast on
its hind-legs and its fore-legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not
above thirteen, or fourteen at most, he did not cry out for help more
than five or six times, but grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the
back of the saddle with the other, till daft Robie, the hostler at the
stables, claught hold of the beast by the head, and off they set. The
young birkie had neither hat nor shoon, but he did not spare the stick;
round and round they flew like mad. Ye would have thought their eyes
would have loupen out; and loudly all the crowds were hurraing, when
young hatless came up foremost, standing in the stirrups, the long stick
between his teeth, and his white hair fleeing behind him in the wind like
streamers on a frosty night.

CHAPTER FOUR--CALF-LOVE

The long and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to
read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's
Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being
mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and t