INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC SCANDAL. 21 
dissatisfied with anything short of continuous successes, the 
difficulty is greatly increased; and unless impossibilities be 
performed, estrangement follows. 
This is not in any sense a theoretic proposition. I can 
give instances innumerable, and not a few which have borne 
very hardly upon myself. In one case I lost one of my 
best employers through the interference of an officer of 
rank, who, once that he got the ball in his own hands, was 
careless even that his agency and aims should be concealed. 
I have lost the support of good employers in other cases, 
simply because they listened to unfounded charges made 
by pseudo-friends, which in some instances would not be 
too severely stigmatised as machinations. An instance or 
two must suffice to illustrate an ungrateful revelation. 
Some few years ago a gentleman sent me two fine yearlings 
to train, which, like many good-looking yearlings do, turned 
out to be useless) The owner when told of this could 
scarcely believe it. He had them tried over and over 
again, but with one and the same result. After hazarding 
all kinds of conjectures as to the prospects of their future 
careers, he inquired, “What can be done?” to which I 
replied unhesitatingly, “Sell them.” We tried to dispose 
of one, and succeeded beyond our expectations by the 
following stratagem. The black horse was sent to New- 
market and run in a Selling Race (for £300), my own boy 
riding him. My instructions to the lad were, that when 
beat, he was to sit steady on his horse and not abuse him 
wherever he might be in the race. He was beat a hundred 
yards, a result thought to be too bad to be true, and he 
was snapped up at the price by the owner of the second 
horse; and as the jockey had neither whip nor spurs, 
the wiseacres putting this fact to the other, had their 
P 2 
