NEWMARKET REMINISCENCES 197 



great invention, would have warned me off 

 without giving me back the money I had not 

 paid at the gate, confiscated the elegant 

 apparatus, string, stone, and all, and insisted on 

 the old roundabout way being reverted to. 

 Whatever they might have done, they did not 

 interfere, and for days we — self and Exchange 

 Company, if it was so — outstripped competition, 

 as conservative prejudice prevented the opposition 

 from lowering themselves, or themselves lowering 

 a bit of weighted string when they could take so 

 much exercise. Of course, my short cutting had 

 a drawback ; the other way did lead you con- 

 veniently ''contagious" to the bar, which was a 

 consideration dealt with by making occasional 

 excursions to ask the genial gentleman tele- 

 graphists whether everything worked satisfac- 

 torily. As regards forbidding the plan's execution 

 and confiscating or looting the apparatus, instead 

 of so doing, the office followed. At least, I do 

 not exactly say that the whole of the pneumatic 

 system was founded on my lead, but no tubes 

 had been laid on, and to-day we have pneumatic 

 appointments all complete, have we not ? — and of 

 their proper merits modest men are dumb, are I 

 not — at least, don't I ? 



While I am at it, and although a few words 

 on Newmarket and this wire-cutting crusade are 

 waiting, I must be permitted to run on a bit 

 about early Press telegraphy and difficulties 

 round which I might spin long yarns. There 

 was, for example, an offfce at Canterbury. This 

 was in 1880. Telegraph offices on cricket 

 grounds were unknown up to 1875 or so, and 

 you were at the tender mercies of local branches 

 carried on in tradesmen's shops. These were 



