268 Among Men and Horses. 



formance, I engaged the Circus which Fillis had built, and 

 gave in it a couple of breaking exhibitions, which were largely 

 attended, as we were given some very violent horses to handle. 



I may explain that after one of these horses had been 

 tried by October or any volunteer, I used to ask the audience 

 if the animal was bad enough to take in hand. If the answer 

 was in the affirmative, I did the breaking, and my wife the 

 riding. But if, on account of the horse failing to buck, or to 

 resist all efforts to mount him, the cry was : ' Quiet horse ; 

 let us have another/ I sent him out of the ring and subjected 

 the next one to a similar test. The refusal of the audience 

 to believe in the vicious propensities of these animals was a 

 bitter disappointment to several of their respective owners, 

 who, both for the reward of 2 which I had advertised for 

 the production of each buckjumper and for the ' swagger ' of 

 bringing a horse which no one could ride, had fetched their 

 animals from long distances to our show. I need hardly 

 say, that I allowed no injustice to be done, as far as the 

 405. were concerned. This policy of offering rewards for 

 vicious horses and of allowing our audience to choose the 

 animals they deemed most suitable to test our powers, gained 

 us hosts of friends ; but soon exhausted the supply of wild 

 horses. It was, however, the only way to render a horse- 

 breaking performance a success as a public show. Deprived 

 of this excitement, it would be as thin and flat to the multi- 

 tude, as would be a lecture on chemistry without plenty of 

 interesting experiments. To show that we were appreciated, 

 I may mention that after we had stopped exhibiting in public 

 from want of raw material to work on, we made ;ioo with a 

 horsebreaking class for gentlemen, and a riding class for 

 ladies. Remembering these things and the kind of men and 

 horses we met in the Transvaal, it makes me laugh to see so- 

 called horse tamers performing in England, night after night, 

 for weeks together, on the same old cab horse. 



Having had numbers of terribly bad shows foisted on 

 them, the South African public are, as I have already said, 



