70 The Life of f'red Archer 
that " small beginnings make great endings." His mount, 
Athol Daisy, was not a real " daisy-cutter," though he later 
won a few more plates ; but his fame will chiefly rest on being 
the first winning mount of the prince of modern horsemen. 
In this second year of Fred's apprenticeship he was put up on 
fifteen occasions, winning twice, and was no fewer than nine 
times second. 
Consequently people began to take notice of Billy Archer's 
little boy. Maidment, the jockey, said that Jim Snowden was 
once about to ride in a race against Freddy Archer and 
looked contemptuously at the juvenile horseman, remarking 
to Maidment : " Is yon lad a ' Sune,' or what ? Tha' tell 
me he can ride ! " — meaning was he put up at such an early age 
because he was the son of a trainer or some notability. 
At one period in the race Maidment was riding on the out- 
side, Snowden in the middle, and Archer on the inside, and 
Snowden said to Archer : " Canst ride, m'lad ? " It was a well- 
run race, and Snowden beat Archer by a head. He turned to 
his crestfallen young opponent (for Archer at no time took defeat 
kindly) and said with scorn : " Tha told me tha couldst ride, 
lad. Tha cassn't ride for nuts ! " 
Even in after years Archer hated to be beaten, and once 
after a race a friend said to him : " You look a trifle put out." 
" Yes, and I feel what I look. And you'd perhaps be put 
out if you'd been riding against Fordhara in that race. He was 
' cluck-clucking ' at his mount the whole of the way. I thought 
I had him beaten two or three times in the two miles. But, 
with his infernal ' cluck, cluck,' he was always coming again. 
Still two hundred yards from home I supposed I had him dead 
settled. ' I'll cluck, cluck you ! ' I thought, and at that instant 
he swoops on me and beats me easily. Yes, I do feel put out." 
Mr. and Mrs. Mathew Dawson had no children of their own, 
and perhaps that made them extra fond of Fred. And he was 
just as devoted to them. He used in later days to say to his 
sister Alice : " There are no two men in the world I would 
