ECCENTRICITY OF OWNERS. 213 
say, although he did not back his charges with argument, 
except in one instance, when as might be expected, his 
reasoning was weak. The oats were inferior he said; and 
when asked the cause of the inferiority declared that they 
were zew. Now oats in the month of April I consider not 
only good but preferable to those kept, as he said his always 
were, until they have seen two Christmas days. Indeed, 
if they have not been eaten before that period, very few 
will be after; for they would most surely smell disagreeably 
and be refused by the horses. His presumption was con- 
siderable when he stated that he could tell old oats from 
new by seeing a few in the manger; but it did not equal 
his lack of veracity in his report of his visit, which was 
literally beneath contempt. 
I have no wish to overstate the case, or to add a word 
incapable of proof, in demonstrating the harm done by the 
tattle (if it be not worse) of friendly busybodies. But that 
the evil exists the following will prove :— 
So long as certain gentlemen ran their horses in my name 
and their own was a well-kept secret, matters went smoothly ; 
but so surely as they substituted their own names, things went 
wrong. If they won, they ought, it was said, to have won 
more. Absurd as it may appear, this was actually said to 
me by a nobleman after winning a large stake; as though 
I were the keeper of his purse-strings! If, on the other 
hand, they were beat, it was the most extraordinary thing 
in the world. Beat and beat again! there was no end to 
it! The trial must have been wrong; the race must have 
been wrong: in fact, the whole business was wrong, and 
there must be an explanation of it. All that before was 
so correct and pleasant, is suddenly transformed to the 
very opposite. Yet there had been no change of management. 
