3i6 MEMORIES OF MEN AND HORSES 



Were much esteemed for spotless innocence, 



And all refinement of nobility, 



And full of virtue lived their lovely lives. 



But Riley, walking on the second day, 

 Sought Portsmouth bookstall, and before his eyes 

 There loomed a volume, with the title dire 

 Dolly : A Love Story ; so he turned and fled, 

 And of his fate the world has heard no more. 



" BLINKHOOLIE." 



I think the above true story, which is true even to the 

 Dolly : A Love Story on the bookstall, is amusing to 

 remember, and yet it is in a sense sad, for the cause of 

 all the trouble in the particular case in question was 

 Abington Baird, who had no redeeming point except 

 that he rode fairly well on the flat. He was so full of 

 money that he could not, reasonably speaking, spend it 

 all in his lifetime. He ruined the pugilistic crowd by 

 spoiling them, and he may have owed his death to that, 

 but as regards women his injury was no less fatal, 

 through sheer bulk of money. I am thankful still to 

 know that while I was running St Stephen's Review I 

 never feared to write the most virulent paragraphs about 

 him, and then go to lunch at Romano's, where his 

 pugilist friends used to forgather. I don't quite know 

 why, but none of them ever troubled me indeed I was 

 good friends with them but not with him. 



Poor little " Dolly Tester" was a vastly better sort 

 than her husband, and an immeasurably better sort than 

 the men concerned in the base conflict for her and some- 

 thing like 50,000, originating from Mr Abington. 



