GEORGE OSBALDESTON. 



'THE OLD SQUIRE.' 



I SHALL not easily forget my first sight of ' The Squire.' 

 I never was so painfully disillusioned and disappointed 

 in my life. It was on Newmarket Heath, eight and 

 thirty years ago, that there was pointed out to me a 

 figure which, I was told with bated breath, was that of 

 'the greatest all-round sportsman of his own or any 

 other age.' And what I saw was this — a short, square, 

 dumpy little old man, with shrivelled, shrunken frame, 

 round shoulders, and limping gait, with a hard, disagree- 

 able face, the features of which were almost as battered 

 as those of an old-time prize-fighter, and dressed in 

 loose, ill-fitting, shabby garments which looked as if they 

 had been picked up at an old clothes shop ! I was 

 asked to believe that this ludicrously unheroic figure was 

 the hero of my boyhood, with whose feats of daring and 

 endurance the whole world had rung ! the mighty 

 horseman, athlete, cricketer, game-shot ! the Admirable 

 Crichton of Sport ! It is true that Osbaldeston was then 

 seventy-two, yet, even at that age, one usually expects to 

 find spmethmg left to suggest what the man must have 

 been in his prime; but there was absolutely nothing dihoMt 

 ' the Squire's ' appearance, as I first saw him, to indicate 



