1 83 RACING. 



his headgear in the event of pubHc performance falsifying his 

 private prognostications, while the number of horses he would 

 have consumed under similar circumstances vvould have kept 

 the Badminton kennels in flesh for a couple of seasons. 



We have never been able to ascertain with absolute accu- 

 racy what Lecturer's trial for that Cesarewitch really was — it 

 lias always been given as Ackworth at even weights — yet have 

 we some vague recollection of being told by John of Danebury 

 that it was the Duke who had succumbed at even weights to 

 Lecturer. What, however, we do remember most clearly, is old 

 John's account of his blank astonishment and dismay when 

 Lord Hastings threw to him across the table the folded slip of 

 paper which contained his intentions with regard to the forth- 

 coming trial. John thought the task, whatever it was, an 

 absurd and impossible one. Nevertheless he knew he had to 

 obey orders, for the Marquis was master in his own stable, and 

 brooked no denial. Moreover, as John pathetically remarked, 

 with hhn individually ' it was a case of Lecturer or White- 

 cross Street,'^ for he had just been called upon, by the grace 

 of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, to meet a dishonoured bill of 

 several thousand pounds, to which, with his usual accommo- 

 dating spirit, he had unwisely appended his name, * as a matter 

 of form,' and to oblige — well, not Benson. The family ex- 

 chequer too was at that moment at lowest ebb. 



The story of Lecturer being left in by mistake when Lord 

 Hastings, thinking his horses badly treated by the handicapper, 

 sent to strike them all out, and of how this one happening to 

 be entered by Mr. ' Peter ' Wilkinson consequently stood, is too 

 old to need more than passing mention. 



It was a lucky ^^/// all round, and came when most needed. 



Let us have a peep behind the scenes of Hayhoe's stable in 

 1 87 1, the Baron's ^^2cc par excellence. 



As soon as Hannah had won the Leger, the Baron knew 



^ That abode of misery, the debtors' prison in Whitecross Street, or, as it 

 was euphoniously called by its inmates, • Constable's Hotel,' out of compliment 

 to the Governor, was tlien in existence. It has long since been abolished. 



