340 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



I have, I hope, made myself one with them, no matter 

 what may have been my aspirations in earlier days. 

 After all, the best rule of life is to do with your might 

 whatever lies before you to do, and so it has happened 

 that I have been " The Special Commissioner " of The 

 Sportsman since 1891. 



There was at least one great relief, so far as the work 

 itself was concerned, and it was that the subject was one 

 which was second nature to me, and could be dealt with 

 almost as a matter of course at any time. It is a very 

 simple thing to write about what you really understand. 

 In fact it is more a question of the manual labour of 

 writing than anything else. 



I made a pretty good hit that first autumn on The 

 Sportsman by going for Childwick as an extraordinary 

 yearling, and he realised 6000 guineas. That was the 

 week when Common won the St Leger and Queen's 

 Birthday the Cup. Sir Blundell Maple bought Common 

 for 15,000 guineas, and said England had need of him 

 when asked to sell to a Continental buyer ; but he would 

 not make a match against Queen's Birthday, except on 

 prohibitive terms 10,000 a side, I think it was. 

 Common was retired to the stud as a four-year-old, and 

 this turned out to have been a bad policy. 



In December of that year the late William Easton got 

 me to assist him in buying a lot of mares at the December 

 sales for Mr James R. Keene, and we also arranged to get 

 together a large consignment of bloodstock of all sorts 

 to be sent out to the United States for sale by Tattersalls 

 of New York the following year, 1892. This I managed 

 to do somehow or other, and what is more, the various 

 lots, over 100 in number, crossed the Atlantic safely, and 

 the sale was a very successful one, totalling about 30,000 

 guineas. So the more or less dormant International 

 Horse Agency and Exchange was awakened into some- 

 thing like new life. 



