254 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



? Twas but a Company a soulless thing 



Its only sympathy a common seal ; 

 But to its memory my mind will cling, 



And happy dreams of it will o'er me steal, 

 Deep burying every care and cruel sting 



Which those who loved it most had most to feel ; 

 Forgetting, too, finance, and unplaced shares, 



And want of money and excess of mares. 



Cobham, with all thy faults no, let me stay, 



I will not weary with a stale remark ; 

 But I did love thee ; and on many a day 



I've gladly gazed and mused from dawn to dark 

 Upon thy varied beauties ; none can say 



That truer friend than I e'er trod thy park. 

 Enough ; 'tis past ; and men behold in me 



A Being strange, who loved a Company. 



Where those lines were published I really don't remem- 

 ber probably in The Sporting Times but the editor of 

 The Bloodstock Breeders' Review dug them up from some- 

 where, and stated, by way of comment : " The tempera- 

 ment of a luckless shareholder who can exploit the Muse 

 in that fashion is, indeed, one to be envied." 



So Cobham passes out of my picture for quite a number 

 of years, and I was faced for the first time with the bed- 

 rock realities of life, everything having gone wrong as 

 regards finance, so that I had been quickly denuded of 

 many thousands not merely through the Stud Company 

 but in many other directions which need not here be gone 

 into. 



I took stock of what the local Bar at Leeds might in 

 its best development result in, and I found it to be a 

 possibility of about 2000 a year. This, with the draw- 

 back of living one's life at Leeds, did not seem good enough 

 by any means, for I had a, doubtless, overrated view of 

 my own abilities, and it did not take long to decide that 

 I must come to London and have chambers at the Temple. 

 I was a member of the Junior Carlton Club, and, I don't 

 mind confessing now, had high political ambitions. 

 The next two or three years brought the grinding process 



