yo Among Men and Horses. 



dearly loved the ' great game,' which he had once played as 

 an owner. I spent many a pleasant hour with him at New- 

 market and elsewhere, talking racing, and observing (not 

 ' watching,' please) the form and shape of horses. He was 

 full of good intentions to write a history of the last twenty- 

 five years of racing, and many a time we discussed its outlines 

 and contents. No one could have written it better than he ; 

 but he lacked the necessary determination to sit down and 

 tackle his subject. He had many friends who kept him 

 ' going ' ; and, though close on sixty, by his wonderful fasci- 

 nation of manner, was as * dangerous ' to pretty women as to 

 a hero-worshipping boy. If he got a 'bit' to go on with, he 

 always respected the debt, and liked to pay it back, though 

 very rarely in coin. Looking through an old book of press 

 notices, I see that I am more in his debt than he in mine. 

 One day I missed him, and the next day I heard he was 

 dead. He was a man of the present, without a future. A 

 man to be loved, even if he could not be respected. A man 

 to be more kindly remembered than regretted. 



Another man who was about town in those days, was 

 poor Joe Radcliffe. He was one of those men who should 

 never have gone near a race-course. He started in life as 

 a gentleman, scholar, owner of a large property, and a 

 thorough sportsman ; but he was impulsive, incapable of 

 thinking evil of others, extravagant, and easily led. He 

 was generous and kind-hearted to a fault, and would not, 

 by word or deed, have hurt the feelings of his worst enemy, 

 even if he had one. Instead of listening to the counsels of 

 his trainer, before his horse, Salvanos, won the Cesarewitch, 

 he took the advice of the parasites who surrounded him, 

 and had the mortification of failing to back the winner. To 

 atone for this neglect, he made such a desperate plunge, 

 again, contrary to the opinion of his trainer, on Salvanos 

 for the Cambridgeshire, that the defeat of his horse ruined 

 him ; for he parted with every penny he had, to settle his 

 debts. He was always cheery, never complained, did not 



