" TREASURE " DALBIAC AND OTHERS 255 



I have been the means of starting two or three on 

 a journalistic career who have said, " Nonsense ! How 

 can / write?" and I have pointed out that they 

 are educated men and understand their subject an 

 enormous handicap in their favour. Such experiments 

 have never failed, and the first of them was in the case 

 of poor old " Treasure " Dalbiac, who made thoroughly 

 good on The Sporting and Dramatic and Country Life 

 Illustrated until he went out to the Boer War, where he 

 met his death at Senekal. I thought so much of him 

 that I acted as locum tenens for him on Country Life 

 until after his death, but I suppose few of his friends 

 knew that he was ever a journalist. He was so, 

 however, and a good one too, and, as I write this, there 

 is in front of me an inkstand made from a hoof of 

 Moatlands, on whom he won the Grand Military Gold 

 Cup over the old Rugby Course long years ago. 



I could mention others whom I have successfully 

 introduced to sporting journalism, but poor old 

 " Treasure " has " passed on," and they have not. I am 

 sure he would not mind, anyhow ; and he is a sufficiently 

 typical example of what I mean. 



It is a mystery to me to this day why so few men 

 should trust their ability to write anything worth 

 reading. Only recently, on board ship, it was the eve 

 of Valentine's Day, and I wrote one or two anonymous 

 trifles purporting to be from other people, but I was 

 taxed with having done so for the simple reason, as 

 alleged, that no one else on board could have written 

 them. This was absurd, for dozens of people on board 

 could have written better, had they thought of trying to 

 do so. 



Time was, of course, when education, in rare in- 



