1 1 2 Among Men and Horses 



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turned upon horses. He told me that he was troubled about 

 a well-bred four-year-old which he had unsuccessfully tried to 

 turn into a hunter. He had trusted its reformation to five 

 successive breakers, who had effected nothing beyond pocket- 

 ing their respective fees of five guineas. I asked what the 

 animal did. ' That's the worst of him,' replied the owner, 

 'he'll do nothing. A child can mount him and remain on 

 his back all day ; but no power or stimulus which we have 

 hitherto applied, has been able to make him move.' In fact, 

 the animal was a rank jibber. Knowing that it was young 

 and guessing that its instructors had not been particularly 

 able, I volunteered to attempt its reduction to obedience. 

 This I did, a few days afterwards, chiefly by means of the 

 long reins. In about an hour, I made the colt so amenable 

 to discipline that he allowed himself to be ridden all over the 

 place in the kindest possible manner. He got another lesson 

 next morning, and gave no further trouble. Some time after 

 that I met Colonel Sampson, who remarked to me that had 

 he known how to break-in horses, he would have been saved, 

 during his old Indian days, from much loss and disappoint- 

 ment with animals which had proved to be beyond his power 

 of control. I also remembered the many wild and stubborn 

 ones that had got the best of me when I used to race and 

 ride in the Punjab and North- West. No wonder, then, when 

 he suggested that I ought to go to India and teach the people 

 there how to break-in horses, that I replied : ' Good-bye, I'm 

 off.' Full of this idea, I took my passage and arrived in 

 Bombay in less than a month. 



A day or two afterwards, I met at lunch in the Bombay Club, 

 Mr Remington, Mr Cecil Gray, Mr Symonds, poor Harold 

 King, and others whose grand passion in life was horses. Of 

 course their first question was : What had brought me back 

 to India? With an air of solemnity which was due to the 

 subject, and which in truth was not unfitting to the serious 

 financial strait in which I would have found myself had I 

 been unsuccessful, I replied that I had come to teach the 



