CHAPTER XXIII 



STRANGE CHARACTERS 



Colonel North How did he do it? Chaotic Betting His Box at 

 Epsom The Tower Hamlets Volunteers The Colonel as a 

 " Fed." " How's that for The Sportsman ? " Private Racing at 

 Newmarket Sundays at Avery Hill John Roberts and the 

 Billiard-Table Colonel North as a Candidate at Leeds His 

 Amazing Sale of Horses and Greyhounds at Avery Hill 

 Hogarthian Scene Parson Parkes Preaches to Mrs Asquith 

 Takes to Training Making Horseshoes during the War A 

 Great Platform Speaker " Pray silence for the Rev. A. W. 

 Parkes ! "7 Class or No Class Piraeus and Orange William 

 A Parson to the last 



THE strangest sporting character I ever met was 

 the late Colonel North, who made a gigantic 

 fortune out of nitrates, but who, so far as I could 

 gather, was not a man with any pretensions to ability. 

 These things happen somehow, and it may be that 

 before I met Colonel North he had some inspiration 

 of genius. Anyhow, he made the money, and every- 

 one ran after him during the nitrate boom, when 

 company after company used to be launched and any- 

 one who could get an allotment of shares was sure of 

 a 2 or $ premium. Goodness knows how they did 

 it, but the game went on merrily, and the Colonel had 

 London at his feet. 



It was in connection with blood stock that I first dis- 

 covered how deficient he was of reasonable intelligence, 

 though I am well aware that others besides have been 

 successes as business men, and yet shown miserable 



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