REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 163 



Gazette. The Gazette writing about Sonepore in November 

 said : 



" Verily Mr. Kelly Maitland was right (much as we who 

 loved the time-honored surroundings hoped against hope) 

 when he wrote seven years ago that Ichabod might be written 

 against Sonepore. The House of Lords is seemingly doomed, 

 Sonepore is gone as an aristocratic meeting, and the only 

 thing worth living for to sportsmen of the old school in 

 Behar is that Lord Ripon is leaving these shores never to 

 return." 



1 This year saw the opening of Sonepore as a railway station 

 of the Bengal and North-Western Railway, and great was the 

 convenience. The old Stewards having resigned en masse, Mr. 

 Arthur Forbes determined that at any rate a good sky meeting 

 should be held, so he formed a committee of the following 

 gentlemen: R. S..Lockhart, E. A. Mackintosh, C. Boileau, G. 

 Nixon, Captain O'Mealy, H. E. Abbott and himself as Hono- 

 rary ^Secretary. The racing was, of its class fair, Jimmy, 

 Gwatkin and Harry brought what nags they had suitable for 

 the programme, and the fields compared favorably with the 

 more, pretentious meetings of late years. . Perrett was the 

 only professional present, the other riders being Bertie Short, 

 Apples, Bob Lockhart, Gilbert Nicolay and Sproggins Macken- 

 zie ; Charley Webb was to have come, but had been tumbling 

 about and broken his collar-bone just before the meeting. 

 Rowland- was an absentee, his marriage to the fair Miss Bar- 

 clay taking placet at Mozufferpore, while Sonepore was in 

 progress. There is nothing worth chronicling as far as the racing 

 is concerned, nobody won and nobody lost much, but the fol- 

 lowing account of the friendly little gathering which appeared 

 in the Indian Planters' Gazette will give an idea of how the 

 fun of the fair was carried on by the Stewards of 1884: 



" Brave men struggling against adversity are popularly 

 supposed to be fit spectacles for the gods. Such have been 



