186 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



effect bundled off to the marine store dealer — by 

 which, Mr Leach, please understand I ain't a- 

 aiming at you. We are hurried quite enough 

 already, so that history made one day is forgotten 

 the next — almost as if its events had never been — 

 and simple little matters like the Cambridgeshire's 

 Red Post — late our western boundary of the fiat 

 galloping to the finish, now abolished — do, I 

 believe, have their valuable uses as reminders of 

 old times and old timers — man and horse. I 

 always was very sorry when another high-coloured 

 adjunct to racing disappeared, and with him his 

 office. Old Martin ^Starling, in his scarlet coat, 

 a.shade or two paler than his rubicund old crusted 

 complexion, was a fine figure of a man on a 

 horse (grey for choice) as an active and visible 

 Master of the Ceremonies, conducting the com- 

 petitors to the start, aiding with his long whip 

 in clearing the course, and, in my opinion, in 

 type a requisite functionary to take charge of the 

 winning horse and personally conduct it and its 

 rider to the weighing-in place. 



You cannot now make a picture of a race- 

 course scene — "Returning to Scale" — without 

 one thing being lacking to those who recollect 

 the old regime. For giving local colouring to 

 the track, old Martin Starling (I knew him and 

 his son Martin, too — two of tl e only five Martins 

 I recollect being on the Turf) was worth all his 

 money in the last capacity, shepherding the 

 winners, and I should be very glad to see his 

 office revived. Had he — that is to say, his 

 successor — been on duty in these later days, we 

 should have missed unpleasantnesses, disquali- 

 fications of horses who had fairly won their races, 

 and then lost them, owing to their riders dis- 



