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HOODWINKING OLD-TIME TOUTS. Lord George Beiitiuck held touts in great abhorrence and took great pains to hoodwink and deceive them. He once directed Prince, the trainer of Preserve, which ran second in Lord Greuvilles name, tlthough the sole property of his first cousin, Ixird George Bentinck himself, to Queen of Trumps for :he Oaks of 1835, to bind that fillys forelegs with jandages, to paiut her nostrils red, so as to give the impression that she had a broken blood vessel, and to resort to all sorts of dodges and tricks in jrder to take in the horse-watchers. His ingenuity did not prevent Preserve from starting for the Oaks with odds of 7 to 4 on her, and, as in many cases of iersons who are particularly clever, she just got beaten. On another occasion Lord Georges sharpness did not again avail to put him ou his guard against an old woman with a basket on her arm who was engaged in gathering mushrooms on Goodwood Downs while an important trial of a lot of his Lordships horses was going on. It is hardly necessary to add that the old woman was a masculine tout, dressed up in that disguise. Harry Stebbins, the trainer, once got on the blind side of the tout in 1S4S. One moonlight night he gave a supper in his house on Black Hambledon to the touts who were detailed to watch his horses, and the head lad and Basshaw, the stable jockey, slipped out uuseen, whilst supper was going on. and tried Mr. Greens Flatcatcher for the Two Thousand. The horse won the gallop and the Newmarket race, too, thus landing a nice stake for the stable.
