CLEARING FROM THE CROWD 



such a little fellow that I might have been dead while 

 they were looking for me on the floor. However, 

 there it was : I was the proudest kid in England or 

 America that day. Apart altogether from what I 

 had done before, I had just made good in England 

 and let them know that there was such a jockey as 

 Sloan. 



All the way back to London I heard that crowd call- 

 ing to me—" Tod," " Toddie," " Sloanie," " Sloan," 

 and everything they could twist my name into. 



In that short month I had forty-eight mounts and 

 won twenty-one races. Lord William sent me im- 

 mediately a splendid gold cigarette-case with the 

 names of the four Manchester winners engraved on 

 it and the second, Keenan. On the other side was a 

 reproduction of his own writing. 



I was tickled to death at the idea that people were 

 beginning to know me and to talk about me a bit 

 more. Oh yes ! I plead guilty ! Nothing is going 

 to be kept back. I intend to write about all the 

 times I got a bit above myself. I confess that it 

 ended in that serious complaint, " Swollen head." 

 At the same time it was not unnatural at my age to 

 be a bit fresh when I had actually shown those who 

 had laughed at me and w^ho didn't believe in me that 

 I could do something they couldn't. 



Now with regard to what I made. I had paid all 

 my expenses and had at the end of the season about 

 two thousand pounds over ; of course this was through 

 my presents. For the time I was at it this was equal 

 to or even better than in some other years in which I 

 rode. In this connection I have just realised — and 

 may as well put in here — that in all the years I rode I 

 never asked for nor charged any fee or expenses for 

 riding trials or gallops, nor did I charge my railway 



69 



