The Life of Fred Archer 235 
gravely publish the fact. His opinion of the Americans, as 
a people, he showed his good sense by dechning to formulate. 
All he could say was that to him — as to Lord Coleridge and 
Mr, Herbert Spencer — ' they had been very kind and hospit- 
able ' — a dictum at which no one can cavil. Mrs. Dudley's 
cell was ' furnished like a drawing-room.' According to her 
account, she could have killed Jeremiah easily ; and as soon as 
she is formally acquitted (a result of which she never enter- 
tains a doubt), it is her intention to take an office next door 
to this apostle of dynamite, and ' frighten him to death.' 
"It is also interesting to learn that, in the opinion of Mr. 
Archer, Mrs. Dudley is quite sane. From which it would seem 
that Epsom has supplied its principal ornament with the 
instinct and aptitude of a Lunacy Commissioner. Why not ? 
Surely Archer is as competent to pronounce on the mens sana 
as on literary and political subjects. The absurdity of all this 
does not lie so much with the interviewed as with the inter- 
viewer. The ' lad," who is not without plenty of sound sense, 
by dint of flattery, and living in an atmosphere of horsiness, 
no doubt believes, hke the Yorkshire 'tyke,' that if a man 
' knows the points of a mare he knows most anything.' When 
a Captain escorts him on his travels, and the reporters of 
newspapers hasten to record his dicta, it is but natural that 
Mr. Archer should imagine that every word which falls from 
his mouth is of interest to the world at large. The ludicrous 
side of the business is that the conductors of any newspaper 
can delude themselves into the belief that the views of a horse - 
jockey on the American Constitution are worthy of preserva- 
tion, or that while the fact of the ' illustrious traveller ' weighing 
'nine stun ten pund,' may be of concern to his employers, his 
comments as to the architecture of the American cities are 
of less value than the criticisms of the Chelsea Chicken on 
the Apollo Belvedere, or of the Southwark Slogger on the 
Cameroons question. 
"And yet, though Mr. Archer's views on the American 
