XX WAYFARING NOTIONS 



appeared in print — found it not easy to realise 

 that he ever did anything but ramble and explore. 

 Yet here is an ordinary specimen of his working 

 day : Up at five or six, write till nine or ten ; 

 *' go for a run " ; cold sponge and breakfast ; 

 walk three to eight miles to a racecourse, hard at 

 work there all the racing time ; very likely walk 

 back, change and dinner, write till ten or eleven 

 at night ; and repeat the whole as a matter of 

 course next day. Many were the articles and 

 also short sporting stories done incidentally to all 

 his regular undertakings, as were his books 

 *• Bottled Holidays for Home Consumption" and 

 ** Racing Life and Racing Characters," which last 

 filled a very long-standing gap ; it described the 

 ways and inhabitants of the racing world for the 

 benefit and amusement of outsiders as well as of 

 the initiated. In conjunction with his brother, 

 Mr John Cobbett, he contributed a handbook on 

 ** Swimming " to the All-England series. His 

 first book, "The Man on the March," was the 

 outcome of a series of articles written while he 

 was accompanying the American pedestrian, 

 F. P. Weston, on the latter's memorable tramp at 

 high pressure through England. In harness to 

 the last, always cheery, and never complaining, 

 he had done at sixty as much labour as most 

 hard-working men at eighty — so remarked Dr 

 Hearnden of Leatherhead, his physician and old 



