244 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



faith in rollers. Personally, I hate rollers, especi- 

 ally the heavy ones, and wouldn't have one on a 

 gallop of mine, except for use perhaps twice or so 

 in a year. You can safely bet a hundred to one 

 on a track treated by putting men on to see to 

 the hoof-prints and plenty of bush harrowing 

 against the latter-day over-rollered courses. If you 

 want downs spoilt, place a Young England trainer 

 of the Newmarket school in charge of a ground. 

 In a season — more particularly winter — he will 

 probably undo all the good an experienced 

 manager of the old school has effected in years. 



Doncaster out of race times strikes the 

 habitual follower of the sport through which the 

 town pays its rates pretty much as does a great 

 public school during vacation, and that to me 

 always seems to suggest somebody's being dead 

 and about to be buried. I don't know why but I 

 never do go through one of our big schools when 

 the boys are away without expecting to hear a 

 bell painfully tolled. If you want to pass an hour 

 or two pleasantly — mind you, the moor makes a 

 very pleasant strolling ground and the avenued 

 high road thereto nice walking, when its great 

 width is left to the local traffic and not guerillaed 

 by wild "course wey " trappers — go fossicking 

 about the old stable-yards on the edge of the 

 town and study the plates on the doors. For 

 instance, past the cross at Bennithorpe, round by 

 the back of the two inns, the Doncaster Arms 

 and the Rockingham, the latter adorned with a 

 portrait of the 1833 Leger winner. There at the 

 portals of boxes and stalls, which in the ordinary 

 way of business shelter any stray nag or harness 

 horse, are fixed the racing-shoes of many great 

 celebrities, with performances painted in between 



