CURIOUS TRAINER'S BILL. 41 



wealthy young man, for I do not think he was more 

 than twenty-six or twenty-seven at the time of his 

 collapse. 



We must look, therefore, to some other cause than 

 racing to find the source of this gentleman's un- 

 mitigated ruin. I may observe that in one minor 

 respect, and true to his character, he never handled 

 one shilling of his winnings. The cost of training, 

 stakes, and travelling — necessarily heavy, with now 

 and then the loss of a bet kindly put on for him by 

 his trainer, would just nicely balance the bill. He 

 was thus saved the trouble of ever having a debtor 

 and creditor account submitted for his inspection ; 

 just as his trainer, Mr. T. Parr, was saved the trouble 

 of making out a document so complicated and useless. 

 Nevertheless, it is a regrettable incident that, for the 

 ease of one man, an account so amusing and instructive 

 should have been lost to the rest of the world. The 

 curious items in it, extending over four years, would 

 doubtless have been intensely edifying — an account 

 which would have been set forth with methodical 

 order and admirable perspicuity ; yet in the algebraic 

 characters defining the problem, would have formed a 

 puzzle that would have defied any mathematician of 

 less ability than Colenso himself. So that, after all, 

 the reader, by a mystical figure of speech, ' in its great 

 loss will lose but little.' 



The habit by which Mr. Starkey really lost himself, 

 was his eccentric propensity to borrow from irregular 



