176 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



having a great year with Favonius, Hannah and Corisande, 

 was so elated by Laburnum's running that he shortly 

 afterwards made the speech in which he said : " The 

 Baron will race next year. Follow the Baron ! " 



As a matter of fact, the luck changed, and he had a very 

 bad season " next year." His remark has come to be 

 associated with his fortunes of 1871, but incorrectly so. 



Prince Charlie ran again, at the Houghton meeting, 

 when he met Cremorne, who until then was regarded as the 

 champion two-year-old, and beat him three lengths, into 

 third place, for the Criterion; Nuneham being second. 

 The Field stated that Cremorne's Derby pretensions were 

 thus effectually disposed of, but that was a case of pro- 

 phesying too soon. Prince Charlie stood 16-3 hh. at 

 that time, with immense power and bone. Never was 

 there such a horse in my experience, and some of us 

 hoped against hope that the report of his being wrong in 

 his wind was untrue. To me it was pure bliss that there 

 should be such a son of Blair Athol. 



I wrote in a page or two before this that we were boxing 

 and fencing, and it should perhaps be explained that as 

 Tom Evans was getting too old I and some others had 

 gone on to Blake's, where Blake himself, a very fine sample 

 of humanity, was a first-rate instructor, not only for 

 boxing, but foils, single-stick or bayonet. There I soon 

 got a lesson in what it means not to stick to work. Boxing 

 at Tom Evans's there had been a man named Brancker, 

 so lacking in skill and aptitude that it was a simple matter 

 to hit him as often as you liked and to prevent his ever 

 hitting you, but he was a genuine trier and did not mind 

 how many times he was hit. Also he never missed a day 

 trying to improve himself. 



Somehow I dropped about six months before I went to 

 Blake, and did no boxing in that interval. When I got 

 there I found Brancker, who had been plodding on all the 

 while and had come to Blake some months earlier. 



I thought it would be an easy preliminary to have a 

 round or two with him, but found, to my intense surprise, 



