70 MEMORIES OF MEN AND HORSES 



And now I pass to The Sportsman of loth Septem- 

 ber 1891, published the day after Common's Leger 

 victory : 



" It remains till after the race to once more discuss the 

 winner. Is he really a great horse ? The position was 

 best summed up by Robert Peck, who, when congratu- 

 lating John Porter, said : ' My word, he is a game one, 

 and how he stays! He's no flyer, but he'd have gone 

 clean away from this lot over two miles and a half. 

 He's quite another old Fisherman. . . .' 



" Mr Tom Spence had all along been so confident that, 

 although he was wedged in where he could not see the 

 finish, he declined utterly to believe the voices of those 

 crying in the Wilderness of faces, * The favourite's 

 beaten,' and offered energetically to increase his support 

 of Common. * I knew,' said he, ' that he must win.' ' 



The day after the St Leger came the Sledmere sale its 

 unvaried date and meanwhile " Pavo," of The Morning 

 Post, who greatly disliked me because I was present and 

 laughed when he mistook the eighteen-year-old Chatta- 

 nooga for a yearling, had taken occasion to alarm the 

 worthy Mr Charles Ashley, one of the proprietors of 

 The Sportsman, by telling him that I had made the paper 

 a laughing-stock by so strongly recommending the 

 St Simon-Plaisanterie yearling whom everybody knew 

 to be no good at all. Mr Ashley came to me with 

 serious countenance, asking if I were sure I was right, 

 as it would be a dreadful thing if I had made a bad 

 mistake at the outset. 



I asked him to wait and see. Here is the record of 

 the sale. 



