90 LIFE OF TEGETMEIER 



Tegetmeier. He was neither to be deceived nor 

 cajoled ; and once sure that a bird had been 

 improperly treated, he knew but one method of 

 dealing with it : he put a black mark against the 

 exhibit and passed on, continuing his scrutiny of 

 the rest of the class. When this preliminary 

 survey was finished he would go to the Secretary 

 and demand " disqualification " cards for all 

 the birds thus tampered with. There might 

 be half-a-dozen, or there might be twenty ; 

 the improperly treated birds might belong to 

 an unknown exhibitor or to one of the most 

 prominent. But numbers and ownership made 

 no difference — he unhesitatingly disqualified 

 them all. 



This unbending attitude towards malpractices 

 did not make for present popularity. Exhibitors 

 of the unscrupulous type — and they were many 

 then — bitterlv resented his methods. On one 

 occasion a group of dealer-exhibitors combined 

 to make a stand against him : they pledged 

 themselves to refrain from exhibiting at any 

 show where Tegetmeier was to act as judge, 

 and signed their names to a circular in this sense 

 and sent it to the secretaries of certain shows. 

 It was an unfortunate step — for them ! A copy 

 of the circular fell into Tegetmeier's hands, and 

 he forthwith published it in the Field, with the 

 ironical remark that it afforded him pleasure to 

 give the document wider publicity than those 



