The Life of a Great Sportsman 



goes on, as compared with formerly ; whilst the mammoth 

 stakes which were introduced in 1886 certainly did it no good, 

 nor the Turf either, so far as I can gather. If, as it was stated 

 at the time, the principal reason for their being started was to 

 give small breeders a chance, they certainly cannot be said 

 to have answered their purpose, seeing that in every single 

 instance, so far as I know, these big prizes have been carried 

 off by owners to whom the winning of a large sum of money 

 is of no moment whatever. That there are a great many good 

 sportsmen on the Turf at the present time we are all aware, 

 but somehow there is not one to be mentioned in recent years 

 who has ever succeeded in obtaining the large public following 

 which always fell to the lot of Lord Falmouth, Sir Joseph 

 Hawley, and Jamie Merry, as his countrymen called the great 

 Scotch ironmaster. Without detracting in any way from their 

 skill, it would be equally hard, especially now Morny Cannon 

 has retired from the profession, to name the jockey riding at 

 the present who can lay claim to the same amount of hero- 

 worship as that accorded in the long ago by their admirers 

 to such past-masters of their art as George Fordham, Tom 

 Cannon, John Osborne, Tom Challoner, and Fred Archer. 



There was a good deal of romance, too, attached to the 

 Derby in former years, which somehow seems to have deserted 

 it lately. Take the story of Wild Dayrell, for instance, whose 

 birth was announced to Mr. Popham at midnight by his excited 

 butler, who went straight out in the snow to the box occupied 

 by his dam, armed with a bottle of port wine and a piece of 

 blue riband, the former to drink to the health of the new 

 arrival, and the latter " to tie round the neck of the winner of 

 the Derby, for the first time in my life." Why, I never heard, 

 but it was said at the time that every footman in London was 

 on Wild Dayrell when he won the Derby. Without doubt the 



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