170 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



winning an absolute certainty, no matter who was scratch, 

 and though one of my ridiculous shoes came oft before 

 we had gone half-way, I came round into the straight 

 with a lead of at least fifteen yards and the race easily 

 in hand as I thought. Someone shouted ; " Don't 

 win too easily ! Make a race for it ! " and then I faced 

 the wind and rain. 



Almost in a moment all was changed. Those flannel 

 "bags" rightly so called for the present purpose 

 rilled out like sails, and I was running as if in a nightmare. 

 I was not beat not in the least but the wind was 

 stopping me, and very badly. I heard loudly increasing 

 shouts and knew that I was being hard pressed someone 

 passed me for a moment, but I caught him again then 

 that relentless wind and those awful holding "bags" 

 it was a desperate struggle, and it was the wind pressure 

 only that beat me, though nominally the Earl of Elgin 

 and J. A. Bryce did. The race in itself is too absurdly 

 unimportant to write about, were it not that it so clearly 

 gave me an object lesson in what the wind can do, and 

 made me at once understand how Tod Sloan and those 

 who rode like him were bound to beat the old " poker- 

 backed " jockeys. 



To dissipate any doubt on the subject, so far as I 

 personally am concerned, I may say that when properly 

 clothed and shod I beat Lord Elgin over the same course 

 the following year by more than fifty yards, and could 

 probably have given him 100 yards in half-a-mile. 



It seems strange, however, that he should have sup- 

 planted me twice, first in Morrison's Fours and then in 

 this absurd half-mile. However, he became Viceroy of 

 India, and thus he finally left me in the lurch. 



By that time I had changed my original rooms, and got 

 much better ones on the second floor, next the Master's 

 House in the inner quadrangle. Stuart Wortley had the 

 ground-floor rooms of the same staircase, and Smith was 

 opposite him on the same floor. Vicars was in the other 

 quad up a spiral staircase, adjoining the Master's House 



