AGRICULTURAL DELIGHTS 37 



agricultural labour. For topping up, " skirting " and 

 thatching a haystack ; for laying a fence well and truly, 

 or for in any other way doing the best possible in farming 

 work, Tommy Wright was a champion, and I used to be 

 allowed to spend whole days with him. He taught me 

 to plough, with an old horse called Clicker, and another, 

 until I could drive a straight furrow and turn them and 

 the plough at the end of it. I could top-and-tail turnips 

 as well as anybody, and then there was the dear delight 

 of hay-making, and the harvest, with the joys of 

 " allowance " tune, when the beer cans used to be seen 

 coming, and the baskets of bread and cheese, with white 

 napery about them. The beer was drunk out of tin mugs 

 or horns, and the bread and cheese was taken anyhow, but 

 I have never liked any other food or drink so well. 



Tommy Wright had a young son, Jack, a great friend 

 of mine, whom my father later on took into his office as 

 a junior clerk, but somehow sedentary life did not suit 

 him, and he died quite young. 



At that period there used to be cricket on the village 

 green on Sunday afternoons but not, I think, after Mr 

 Kingsley took charge. 



These details, trifling as they are, may serve to give 

 some slight impression of the place and period, but as to 

 racing I must note here that my father was not given that 

 way. He was a first-rate shot as men used to shoot in 

 those days, over dogs, and a skilled fisherman, but racing 

 was left to his more opulent half-brothers, of whom Tom 

 Allison, of White House, in North Yorkshire, had some 

 success. His colours were scarlet and white cap. Lord 

 Carnarvon now has the same, with the addition of a blue 

 collar. 



Then, too, Mr Arrowsmith, my father's partner, not 

 only raced but bred bloodstock. Two of his winners, 

 Carlton and Trepan, I very well remember, though he 

 did not race them in his own name, but in that of Mr 

 " J. Anderson." Trepan, foaled in 1856, won twice at 

 Thirsk in 1859. He was by Flatcatcher out of Jane Eyre 



