Mr John Hubert Moore. 79 



ure. Before I published this book, I delighted in the teach- 

 ing of tactics ; for it required a certain amount of research and 

 originality to collect the required facts and to combine them 

 with the requisite amount of skill. When the book was 

 printed, I realised for the first time that I had henceforth 

 to employ a labour-saving machine, instead of working with 

 my brains. Military law consisted of learning up 500 or 

 600 possible questions ; fortification was as bad ; military 

 topography not much better ; and here was tactics, the one 

 redeeming subject of the four, placed on a purely mechanical 

 basis. This, as poor Artemus Ward used to say, was a darned 

 sight too much, especially as a yearning to get back again 

 among horses was growing on me more and more. The 

 chance at last arrived. I threw away my military books, and 

 I departed on my travels. In clearing off the account of my 

 cramming experiences, I find I have run off the line, so shall 

 now hark back to pick it up again. 



During the winter months of 1876-77, which I spent in 

 Edinburgh at Professor Williams' Veterinary College, I had 

 made the acquaintance of Mr W. H. Moore, who was also 

 studying at the same place, and who has since developed 

 into a famous G.R., even as his brother Garratt did. Before 

 we went to Edinburgh in 1881, we received an invitation 

 from Willie Moore to come and stay with his father, who had 

 a training stable at Jevington, near Eastbourne, and who had 

 in his string, among others, Liberator, Theodora and Pompeia. 

 The old man, John Hubert, was known all over Ireland, and 

 through a good part of England, as an extraordinary 

 ' character.' He might justly be called the Father of Irish 

 Steeplechasing, and has had, probably, more to do with the 

 cross-country game than any man alive. At that time he 

 was a tall, gaunt, powerful-looking man of about seventy, 

 and a terrible ' tyrant,' as they say in Ireland. When roused 

 to anger (and faith it didn't take much to set him on), he 

 had an effective way of clearing a room — generally after 

 dinner in an hotel, during a race meeting or horse fair — by 



