224 Among Men and Horses. 



Elizabeth, where I left my wife, when I went to hold a class 

 at Craddock. 



My assistant up to that time had been a young Londoner 

 of the clerk class, which is the worst of all for getting on 

 in foreign countries. He wrote a much better hand than 

 I did. He was well-educated, sober, honest, respectful in 

 his manner, punctual, attentive to buisness ; and yet for 

 want of a certain amount of ' devil ' and physical energy, 

 he was only fit to be put behind a counter or at a desk, 

 at neither of which kinds of work are there any vacancies 

 in the Cape. Dalston (which will do as a name for him 

 as well as any other) not being a hard-handed, resolute 

 style of chap, was in a ' stranded ' state when I first met 

 him. He could get no employment at Cape Town, and 

 his prospects of suitable work up country, even if he had 

 the money to go there, were even worse. I could not help 

 wondering what on earth had ever induced him and hundreds 

 like him to come to South Africa, for which they are as 

 suitable as a one-legged man would be for sprinting. At 

 the time I engaged Dalston, I was patiently waiting at 

 Cape Town for the completion of existing functions before 

 starting our show, and hoped that, when it would be ready, 

 my coadjutor would have learned to clean leather and steel 

 work, and to know the names of the various portions of 

 my saddle and bridle gear. This he did with alacrity, and 

 displayed great intelligence in the manufacture of oxygen 

 gas for our magic lantern. He understood the chemistry 

 of the process quite as well as I did, and used to stop up 

 half the night studying that portion of optics which refers 

 to lenses and condensers. I was careful to explain to 

 Dalston that the magic-lantern lectures I gave were merely 

 a bit of by-play to the serious business of horsebreaking. 

 I trusted that he would not become discouraged during 

 the period of our enforced idleness, and promised to make 

 him as expert as I was in the art of giving horses good 

 manners and snaffle bridle mouths. I advised him not to 



