INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC SCANDAL. 211 



dissatisfied with anything short of continuous successes, the 

 difficulty is greatly increased ; and unless impossibilities be 

 performed, estrangement follows. 



This is not in any sense a theoretic proposition. I can 

 give instances innumerable, and not a few which have borne 

 very hardly upon myself. In one case I lost one of my 

 best employers through the interference of an officer of 

 rank, who, once that he got the ball in his own hands, was 

 careless even that his agency and aims should be concealed. 

 I have lost the support of good employers in other cases, 

 simply because they listened to unfounded charges made 

 by pseudo-friends, which in some instances would not be 

 too severely stigmatised as machinations. An instance or 

 two must suffice to illustrate an ungrateful revelation. 



Some few years ago a gentleman sent me two fine yearlings 

 to train, which, like many good-looking yearlings do, turned 

 out to be useless. The owner when told of this could 

 scarcely believe it. He had them tried over and over 

 again, but with one and the same result. After hazarding 

 all kinds of conjectures as to the prospects of their future 

 careers, he inquired, "What can be done.''" to which I 

 rephed unhesitatingly, " Sell them." We tried to dispose 

 of one, and succeeded beyond our expectations by the 

 following stratagem. The black horse was sent to New- 

 market and run in a Selling Race (for iJ"300), my own boy 

 riding him. My instructions to the lad were, that when 

 beat, he was to sit steady on his horse and not abuse him 

 wherever he might be in the race. He was beat a hundred 

 yards, a result thought to be too bad to be true, and he 

 was snapped up at the price by the owner of the second 

 horse ; and as the jockey had neither whip nor spurs, 

 the wiseacres putting this fact to the other, had their 



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