AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 



435 



been savaged in the stable by a horse, nor has 

 any horse ever had hold of me to do me any 

 harm. No doubt the temper of many horses is 

 spoiled by bad treatment." 

 This immunity from " savaging " speaks volumes for 

 John's knovs^ledge, and scarcely less for the humane 

 manner in which he treats his horses, thereby getting 

 that confidence which is only too often divorced by 

 ignorance of and cruelty to the noblest of quadrupeds. 

 In these days, when our boys and girls are crammed 

 with technical education, which in nine cases out of ten 

 is valueless to them in the real earnest and practical 

 struggle of life, would it not be well to estabHsh 

 scholarships whose end and aims would be to show 

 the affinity — the close and mysterious affinity in feeling 

 and even in sentiment — that exists between man and 

 horse, and, relatively, in the lower grades of the brute 

 creation? Much of the unspeakable cruelty, nay, 

 torture, which horses suffer would vanish, and to those 

 who really love a horse much pain would be avoided. 



Not long since it was falsely asserted that a jockey's 

 earnings in the present day are about the same as they 

 were between thirty and forty years ago. This led to 

 a controversy about the raising of jockey's fees, some 

 of the advocates for the increase asking why, with 

 other classes of the community obtaining increased 

 remuneration, the jockey should be satisfied with what 

 was paid him three or four decades ago? It is a fact 

 that jockeys in the present day are in receipt of 

 earnings three times as much as they were when Fred 

 Archer flashed upon the arena like a meteor. Archer, 

 indeed, rode more winners in a season than Frank 

 Butler had mounts. Compared with what they used 

 to be, the presents made to jockeys in our time are much 



