25 



CHAPTER II. 



NEWMARKET AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 



A FEW words explaining how I came to be a trainer 

 of race-horses may perhaps be not unacceptable to 

 those of my readers in whom a taste for the past 

 predominates over (what is far more usual) a taste 

 only for the present. It would by many be deemed 

 a sufficient reason for me to say that I was born 

 at Newmarket, and that my father and grand- 

 father had lived there for more than sixty years 

 before I came into existence. My grandfather 

 was a builder by profession, and constructed a 

 considerable number of the principal houses and 

 other buildings, including stables, in what has 

 long been erroneously called, " The famous little 

 town in Cambridgeshire " erroneously, because 

 only half of it is in Cambridgeshire, the other half 

 being, as every one knows, in Suffolk. Among 

 the buildings for which my grandfather was re- 

 sponsible may be included " The Rooms," of which 

 a Mr Parrs, who also kept a school, was for a long 



