In a Bacing Stable, 69 



It may be a slight injury reducible by hot water and 

 bandages in four-and-twenty hours; it may turn out in 

 eight-and-forty hours to be fatal to the fulfilment of a 

 horse's engagements for the rest of the season. What is 

 a trainer to do ? If the owner is an excitable man a false 

 alarm may drive him half crazy ; if he is an unreasonable 

 man he will never forgive his trainer — should the accident 

 prove bad — for not telegraphing to him on the first sus- 

 picion of mischief. Added to these troubles is the danger 

 of mischief from without. There must be black sheep in 

 this world, as any Head Master in England will tell you 

 there are in all ranks of life — and in spite of the eyes of 

 Argus the temptations ofiered by the scum of the earth 

 outside the stables must often break a trainer's rest. A 

 globule, the size of a homoeopathic dose, may contain enough 

 mischief to stop a horse temporarily, without permanent 

 injury, and without fear of detection. Given a weak- 

 minded or wicked boy, a villain with the medical appliances, 

 and ten golden sovereigns, and where is the trainer's labour ? 



People little think when the horse, the engagements of 

 which may be worth many thousands of pounds, is stripped 

 for their admiration, how black care has sat behind the 

 trainer for weeks and weeks past as well as behind the 

 horseman. 



Turning into the home farm and the paddocks, where 

 brood mares of the first pedigree are walking about heavy in 

 foal, it was pleasing to see how many of the mares " sought 

 the master's hand," and to witness how they came up to 

 him as if they were ladies seeing a visitor ; and a young 

 colt, of six months old, of very good pedigree, who had his first 

 headstall, did the honours of his paddock, quite like a 

 gentleman ; but on the first crack of the whip like the 

 celebrated — 



" Liber et exultaas latis equus ardet in agris." 



