3io MEMORIES OF MEN AND HORSES 



The above was not the first occasion on which we had 

 used this remarkable story against Mr Burns, and it is 

 quite true that the late Major Dalbiac (" The Treasure ") 

 was prepared to take him on in any conceivable contest. 

 After the correspondence had been published in The 

 Times and all other papers, Sir Claude de Crespigny 

 also sent in his name as being desirous of taking a hand 

 in the game, and Mr Burns was in a remarkably tight 

 place, for the original challenge had been his own and 

 perfectly gratuitous. 



He took refuge in the policy of " Brer Rabbit" that 

 is, "he lay low and said nuffen." 



Those were great times, and the Sporting League 

 made things hum very pleasantly, not only in Battersea, 

 but in many another constituency where anti-gamblers 

 and spoil-sports raised their hateful heads ; but I have 

 not the space in which to further detail such alarums 

 and excursions. Maybe one is too old to go in for 

 them again now, but there is always crying need for 

 strong, organised resistance to all Puritanical attacks on 

 individual Liberty, whether such attacks are engineered 

 by the former enemies, such as John Hawke, Bevan, 

 Mrs Ormiston Chant, Alpheus Cleophas Morton, or, in 

 these later days, by Pussyfoot Johnson and his teetotal 

 accomplices. 



I have mentioned Major Dalbiac in connection with 

 the John Burns challenge, and that leads me almost 

 irrepressibly to a pugilistic affair at the back of the 

 stands of the Grange Fort Galloway Meeting (Ports- 

 mouth) while a race was being actually run. Major 

 Dalbiac used to control the meeting, and it was a very 

 successful one of its sort. It was in the beginning of 

 June 1889, and my first experience on entering the 



