A Libel Action. 343 



were chiefly country visitors. And yet this was the one 

 grand yearly occasion afforded to Londoners to inspect a 

 large variety of some of the finest horses in the world. I 

 am again forced to the conclusion that the great body of 

 Londoners, and I might add, or people who neither ride 

 nor drive, care nothing about horses. The newsboys who 

 run in and out among the crowd, hawking their evening 

 papers, show their knowledge of their customers by shouting 

 'Winner! Winner!!' Imagine what would be the disgust 

 of the average purchaser if, instead of the results of races, 

 he were to find only a list of the winners at the Agricultural 

 Hall! 



In country parts of England, great interest is taken in 

 horse shows. Judging by the familiar faces which invariably 

 turn up at the Hall, Cambridge, Peterborough, Liverpool, 

 Leicester and other places, we may conclude that there is 

 a small body of enthusiasts who spend all their time at 

 horse shows, or in looking to these functions. These are 

 the people whom I like to get among, and talk 'horse* 

 with them. 



During the preceding winter, I had, greatly to my surprise, 

 been served with a writ for a libel action, which Mr Sexton, 

 alias ' Professor ' Leon, had instituted against my wife for 

 her comments, in an Indian newspaper for which she used 

 to write, on Sexton's horse-taming show at the Aquarium. 

 She had listened seriously to the statements made concerning 

 the awful depravity and wildness of the ' crocks ' which were 

 brought on the stage, and knowing what wild and vicious 

 horses really were, she got mad, and wrote what was certainly 

 a libel. Had she known that ' Leon, the Mexican horse- 

 tamer' was only a nom de theatre ; that instead of being 

 a Mexican horseman, he, Sexton, was, as he stated at the 

 trial, an English printer's clerk who had never been out of 

 the United Kingdom ; and that he had learned the ' system ' 

 from his brother-in-law, Galvayne, she would have smiled 

 at the hyperbole used, and would have applauded Sexton 



