io8 Among Men and Horses. 



drove or rode horses, he encountered worthy citizens who 

 loved horses only theoretically. News also came to him that 

 he was not the first in the field ; but that a Mr Osborn, who 

 had learnt the system while in Australia from him, had 

 preceded his instructor by about six months, and was, at the 

 time of Sample's arrival in London, busily engaged teaching 

 in Yorkshire, the patent system on his own account. I may 

 explain that it was Sample's custom to get each of his pupils 

 to sign a paper saying that he would not disclose the secrets 

 of the system. Under threat, so Sample tells me, of ' showing 

 up' Mr Osborn for this breach of faith, Sample made Pro- 

 fessor Galvayne, as Osborn now called himself, come to 

 London and help him in his first performances; the chief part 

 allotted to him being the supply of ferocious horses. Whether 

 Galvayne was unable to procure these equine demons, or 

 whether he did not see the force of helping a former master 

 and present rival, I cannot say. Anyhow, the wild horses 

 were not produced, and the affair, as I have already described, 

 turned out a terrible ' frost.' 



Anxious to see as much as I possibly could of this new 

 style of horse taming I accepted Mr Galvayne's invitation to 

 attend a seance which he was going to hold at a riding-school 

 in Islington. He asked me to say nothing about the matter 

 to Sample. The performance came off, and was conducted 

 in a precisely similar manner to those given by Sample ; 

 except that, in this instance, Galvayne claimed the head and 

 tail trick, Indian war bridle, long rein driving, the determina- 

 tion of the age of the horse up to thirty years of age, and 

 everything else that Sample had shown to his class, as inven- 

 tions of his own original genius ; and yet, about ten days 

 before that, I heard him declare in Hengler's circus that he 

 had learned them from Sample ! 



Mention of Galvayne's claim reminds me to make a few 

 remarks on the originality of horse taming systems. Mr R. 

 Jennings in his Horse Training Made Easy, which was 

 published in America in 1866, describes the head and tail 



