RACING 199 



interesting- ; indeed, to my mind, by far the 

 most interesting part of racing. 



First of all there is the horse, which may be 

 a thoroughbred bought out of a selling race 

 because he is not fast enough for the flat, or a 

 hunter which may be only technically half-bred ; 

 or, again, he may be a horse of the useful 

 hunter stamp which has, or is supposed to 

 have, a turn of speed. Let us take the first 

 of these, and perhaps it will be best to sketch 

 the actual career of a horse which becjan life 

 on the flat. He was a o-ood-lookino- chestnut 

 horse, and he was bouo^ht for somethino- under 

 ^50 out of a selling race at Windsor as a three 

 year old. The first thing done was to give 

 him a dose of physic and turn him out for three 

 months, handling him sufficiently to prevent 

 him from forgetting all he knew. Then he 

 was taken up and broken afresh, very 

 carefully and patiently. At first he w^as 

 a bit wild, but soon began to quiet down, 

 and by the time he was four he had sobered 

 into a very reasonable sort of lady's hack, and 

 was a great pet with his mistress. All this 

 time he was being taught to jump in a school, 

 for his owner had one of those excellent things 

 — a circular jumping school. In this the groom, 

 stands in the middle on a platform and lunges 

 the pupil round over a variety of made fences. 



