68 Among Men and Horses. 



<5 



was too sick to ride, and he had sent his well-chosen horses 

 up to Tattersall's to be sold. The explanation, you ask? 

 Well, it was the old story of the unalterable devotion of a 

 woman, whose wealthy father would not hear of their union. 

 She, all through his evil days, had remained his friend ; and 

 married him when her father died. By the irony of fate, 

 the cup of happiness was hardly at his parched lips, before 

 death dashed it aside, and poor Lynx's troubled life was 

 ended at last in peace. 



I did not much mind the collapse of our horse registry 

 scheme ; for about that time I became aware that a book on 

 riding was becoming developed in my mind. I wrote it 

 chiefly from a racing, chasing, and hunting point of view, and 

 called it Riding on the Flat and Across Country. I met a 

 young artist who at that time was chiefly engaged in making 

 drawings and designs for ' process ' work. Although his 

 talent, of which he has lots, had not been directed to horses, 

 he illustrated my book very creditably, considering that I, 

 who acted as his teacher in this line, knew extremely little 

 about the way in which horses ought to be drawn. I was 

 steeped in empirical traditions of equine conformation. Had 

 I known more, I might have helped him over many difficulties 

 connected with the correct delineation of horses. Although 

 my young friend, who is now the well-known artist, Mr 

 Stanley Berkeley, has made his fame and money in other 

 branches of painting, I trust that he will study The Points 

 of the Horse, which I have lately published ; for in it he will 

 find the solution of many problems which puzzled us both in 

 the year 1880. The success of Riding on the Flat and Across 

 Country came quickly, thanks chiefly to the generous re- 

 ception it obtained from the London press. I was fortunate 

 to meet the editor of The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic 

 News, Mr Alfred Watson, who did me several good turns in 

 his own columns and also in The Standard, of which he was 

 the music critic before he joined Mr Webling. I used to see 

 a good deal of him in those days, and contributed now and 



