GOOD COMPANY 339 



six months, for I suppose I must have seemed a sort of 

 dangerous firebrand. 



I have mentioned the hesitation reluctance, if you will 

 with which I took on this job, but having crossed the 

 Rubicon, I have done what is in me throughout all these 

 years to make the best of it. Others can say what the 

 result has been ; but I am sure of this, that I have never 

 received more kindness and consideration than from the 

 members of the sporting Press who go the rounds of the 

 race-meetings. 



The whole business was quite new to me at the outset ; 

 for a weekly paper does not give you the remotest insight 

 into the work of a daily. It seemed almost like going to 

 school for the first time, but I found " Charlie " Green, 

 who then was and still is head of the travelling staff, a 

 mentor indeed. Many of those who then went the rounds 

 have now gone over, and they were all good, cheery souls : 

 rough-spoken Tom Callaghan, who could charm anyone if 

 he sat down to a piano ; Jack Cobbett and his brother 

 Martin, great characters both ; Charles Greenwood, a 

 really first-rate journalist ; " Jim " Flood, whose recent 

 death was a sorrow to all of us. Then there are others 

 living, such as Paul Widdison, strong of speech but true 

 as gold ; S. A. Phipps, who knows more than anyone 

 about jockeys, and can adorn any subject that he touches. 

 A good many others have died : old and young Bradley, 

 of The Sporting Chronicle ; Neville, of the same paper, 



a thoroughly good sort ; John Corlett It really does 



not bear thinking about when one enumerates those who 

 have gone, but Jim Smith, Sydenham Dixon, Jim George, 

 Meyrick Goode, Fred Ball, Frank Pearce, Graham,Mellish, 

 Luckman and some more of us remain to afflict our 

 readers for, it may be, a few years longer. The mention 

 of Sydenham Dixon recalls the memory of his predecessor 

 at Newmarket, Donat Leonard, one of the best but 

 strangely impulsive. 



I did not set out to give anything like a comprehensive 

 list of these good people, but I only want to indicate that 



