234 The Life of Fred Archer 
lad in the Newmarket stables, earns about twice the wages 
of an ambassador. This in itself is something, and proves 
the wisdom of the Universities which now affirm that a know- 
ledge of Greek is an unnecessary equipment for the battle of 
life. However, if anyone remains ignorant of the antece- 
dents, merits, fame and opinions of Mr. Archer after the ample 
details with which the newspaper reporters have favoured us, 
it will be entirely his own fault. The ' Prince of the Pigskin,' 
like other eminent men, has been starring it in the New World, 
and though, perhaps, not quite so lettered as Mr. Arnold, or 
scientific as Professor Huxley, or so worthy of applause as 
Mr. Irving, or Dr. Freeman, it is quite evident that he received 
much more attention than any one of these celebrities. The 
horse-jockey and his friend Captain Bowhng appear to have 
been making quite a triumphal progress. They were feasted 
and f^ted and lauded and saw everybody worth seeing, from 
the Newmarket point of view, and everything which a great 
Englishman, whose greatness hangs to the back of a horse, 
ought to see. In New York they were the guests of Governor 
Vanderbilt — ^who also, we beUeve, entertained Lord Coleridge. 
They were not dined by the President, probably regarding a 
person of so little account in the ring as unworthy of a visit. 
They were among the other eminent individuals received by 
Mrs. Lucilla Dudley, whose attempt to assassinate Mr. Jeremiah 
O'Donovan miscarried. Altogether the Captain and his 
friend seem to be having what no doubt they have by this time 
learnt to call ' a high old time of it.' 
"All this is extremely entertaining, though possibly the 
Chief Justice, as he reads the story of Mr. Archer's doings, may 
feel that, after all, he was not made so much of as he had 
fondly imagined. It is only when the jockey begins to un- 
burden himself to the interviewers that the world, whose 
sense of humour is not bounded by a paddock, begins to find 
the business so monstrously amusing. Mr. Archer, we learn, 
considers American theatres really Ai., and the reporters 
