My Racing Adventures 



necessarily realise which horse was actually being 

 tested. Some of these gentlemen are not likely 

 to do their customers much harm unless cash 

 is recklessly invested on the strength of their 

 " information." If all trials were right and true, 

 there would, as an owner has averred, soon be 

 no bookmakers in existence, and whom then 

 should we have to dash at with impunity? 

 The question is too painful for discussion in this 

 chaste excursus. 



Like many trainers of the old school, my father 

 did not love the " men of observation." I have 

 known him to bring horses out of a morning, 

 give them a couple of canters on the Downs, 

 send them home, and have them out again in 

 the afternoon, so as to try them when the touts 

 were probably indulging in a Bacchanalian siesta. 

 His delight was to get the best of those con- 

 noisseurs, and his success was often so marked 

 that they wondered where they had been at the 

 wrong moment. Their wiles, however, were not 

 a little ingenious. When, for instance, a good 

 hurdle race-horse (" Courtier," on whom I won 

 the Sandown Grand Prize) was in our stable, he 

 was tried at Walton, our " schooling " ground, 

 and one of the local touts had been waiting for 

 days to obtain a view of that gallop. Eventually 



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