NEWMARKET REMINISCENCES 195 



and, so far as possible, abolishes its unauthorised 

 rivals. ''With them" the Jockey Club — and 

 where other course proprietors are affected or 

 deemed to be in risk of being prejudiced, their 

 strength Is lent to the P.O. also. The agency's 

 agent gets telephone wires — they are cut or 

 confiscated; employs telescopes — warned off; 

 calls into play tick-tacking of sorts — put down 

 by the strong arm of power, if not the law. I 

 cannot help laughing to myself at a memory this 

 fight calls up, because it shows the benighted 

 slothfulness with which we move, or used to 

 move, and demonstrates to absurdity how 

 intrinsically innocent and well-deserving dodges 

 may be classed as irregularity even to unlaw- 

 fulness. Years ago, before 1880, I think, I was 

 asked to assist one of the tape-machine companies 

 by getting off cricket news from Lord's. The 

 Press "hutch" — as it used to be called, to bring 

 it into line with the shepherd's-hut-on-stilts 

 perch at Kennington Oval — was located in the 

 middle of the long grand stand facing the clock 

 at the M.C.C.'s place. In the ground floor to 

 our bit of gallery were the telegraph — electric, not 

 semaphore — number-board operators. From the 

 first installation of the branch office on the ground 

 it was customary for such as had to dispatch 

 bulletins to make the long journey half the length 

 of this stand's gallery, and do ditto on the 

 ground by the refreshment bar — not necessarily 

 always by the bar — to the office, which was 

 equivalent to going a mile and a half to get over 

 the way, with the difference that our voyage was 

 from one floor to the next. As this company's 

 service — perhaps it was the same Exchange 

 Company concerned in the Newmarket opera- 



