40 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



myself half-a-sovereign each. This was very welcome 

 while we were children, but there came a time when we 

 began to feel ourselves too old for this sort of thing, and, 

 curiously enough, the same idea seemed to have occurred 

 to the old gentleman, for he came one Christmas without 

 his ten shillings presents, and I think we were not 

 altogether pleased with the omission. 



Another sportsman of Thirsk was " Sammy " Cass, the 

 brewer, but inasmuch as he was the wrong side in politics, 

 he was outside the pale. He was really a good sportsman, 

 however, and used to ride his own horses at Thirsk races 

 I well remember one called the Jew, on whom he won the 

 North Riding Farmers' Hunt Cup of two and a half miles 

 in 1864, having won it the year before on Sky Rocket. 

 " Sammy Cass wins on the Jew ! " still rings in my 

 memory as a race-course cry, for he won again on the Jew 

 in 1865, after something that finished in front of him had 

 been disqualified and the owner warned off. 



Mr Cass owned greyhounds of repute, and won a 

 Waterloo Cup, but it so happened that some of his grey- 

 hounds, out at exercise, went for a little pet dog of ours 

 called Bosky, and the end of that may be imagined. The 

 idea that such a dreadful thing should have been done 

 by the greyhounds of a political adversary was almost 

 intolerable, and I wept bitterly over the death of Bosky. 

 Yet from a Diary which I kept in 1863 the following 

 passage shows that I had not passed beyond the primeval 

 savage or cruel instincts with which we are all born, 

 until education in the humanities " Emollit mores, nee 

 sinit esse feros." 



The extract is dated 22nd January 1863. 



I saw a pig killed this afternoon. The first time it was struck 

 it broke the rope and got away. It was pulled back and struck 

 twice, and had its throat cut twice, and then was scalded to 

 death. 



Such miraculous changes come over us in process of 

 time ! for I, who would not now see a living thing hurt, 



