298 Among Men and Horses. 



must say that the performance greatly disappointed us, and 

 that there was nothing new in it, except that, instead of tying 

 up one foreleg, in order to throw a horse down, and pulling up 

 the other foot by a rope or strap passing through the surcingle 

 or through a pulley attached to it, as Rarey used to do ; both 

 feet were pulled up, with the result that the animal came 

 down on his knees with more or less violence. This way of 

 making a horse lie down appeared to me very much inferior 

 to the method which was first shown in England by Sample, 

 and which was, so Sample tells me, invented by Hamilton 

 the American horse tamer. Norton Smith strictly confined 

 himself to the dreary taming business, and we came away 

 unamused and uninstructed. 



Among the people I had left behind, I was glad to see 

 on my return, Mr Vero Shaw, who is one of the few 

 genuine literary Bohemians I have ever met. He is the 

 best all-round judge of a dog in England, especially if the 

 animal be a bull terrier. ' In rain or shine' he is always the 

 same cheery companion, and there would be no difference 

 in his kindly greeting were he to meet me sweeping a cross- 

 ing, or dispensing hospitality from a well-stocked four-in- 

 hand at Ascot. I have found from experience that one's 

 acquaintances are far more ready to accept one's surround- 

 ings than one's self. 



I was glad to meet Mr J. Moray Brown, an old 79th and 

 Wellington College man. In India he did a great deal of 

 shooting and pigsticking, especially in the Central Provinces, 

 and had his name bracketted with that of Mr (now Colonel) 

 W. S. Hebbert as the winner of the greatest number of First 

 Spears, including one off a panther, for the Nagpore Hunt 

 Cup of 1870-71. At the end of fourteen years service, and 

 tired with the slowness of promotion, he retired in 1880, had 

 seven years' hunting in the south of England, and then ' took ' 

 to journalism and literature. Being an old polo hand, having 

 played the game twenty years ago at Aldershot and Edin- 

 burgh, his articles on polo in Land and Water, of which he is 



