236 Among Men and Horses. 



in the new town of Kenilworth entirely by themselves. He 

 arranged that their wants should be supplied by company's 

 stores on terms against which no private individual in Kim- 

 berley could compete, and gave them every facility for recrea- 

 tion and amusement. The streets of smart shops, the broad 

 roads with fine trees on each side, the luxuriously built villas, 

 the large hotels, the best club in South Africa were all doomed 

 to decay in the near future. Yet a short respite was given ; 

 for the South African Exhibition was to be held at Kimberley 

 in four or five months' time. Many of the residents deeming 

 the first loss the least, had disposed of their property for what 

 it would fetch and had departed, in the majority of instances, 

 to Johannesburg, or the Randt as it is familiarly called. But 

 others held on in the hope of making a fortune during the 

 three months of exhibition time. These men are so accus- 

 tomed to take the rough with the smooth, the lean with the 

 fat of life, that they seemed to be but little affected by their 

 impending financial doom. Anyhow, the tightness of money, 

 about which I had heard and read a good deal, luckily did not 

 prevent them from coming to my class. 



In order to explain my programme and to put myself en 

 rapport with the people, I gave a lecture one evening in the 

 Town Hall on horsebreaking, and Mr Lawrence, the mayor, 

 very kindly took the chair. I felt myself in good form, told 

 lots of yarns, made the audience laugh, and must have spoken 

 well ; for after my talk was over, I had a large number of 

 applicants to join my class. Although I may carefully think 

 over what I am going to say, and may even jot down a few 

 short notes to be used while I am speaking, I always find 

 that when I begin to talk about horses from a platform, the 

 subject carries me away, so that I am guided neither by notes 

 nor by any pre-arranged plan. In this I believe I am no 

 loser ; for if I were to pay more attention than I do to the 

 choice of my words and to the construction of my sentences, 

 I would weaken the interest of the audience in the subject- 

 matter of the discourse. Besides, when a man is thinking 



