As a Londoner I had been greatly fascinated by the proud teams of some of the great brewers, horsed by the progeny of the sires owned by such men as the late Lord Ellesmere, Lord Wantage, Mr. Edward Coke, Sir Walter Gilbey and others. I told my farmer friend that I had seen that Mr. Coke was going to have a sale at Longford, in Derbyshire, and knowing him to be a fine judge of horseflesh, promised that if he would go with me, I would try and obtain a horse. He was delighted, and agreed to help me. We went and looked over the stallions, but there was not one that quite satisfied my friend’s critical eye. We went round the stalls with my old schoolfellow Reggie Buller, a colonel in the Grenadier Guards (famous as the first boy who introduced a cutaway coat in place of the old “tails” at Eton), who was a sort of uncle to Mr. Coke’s stud. Rather nettled at our not seeming to fall down and worship he turned to my friend and said, “You must have some very good horses in your neighbourhood if none of these please you.” “No,” was the answer, “we have nothing but rotten ones, and that’s what makes me such a good judge of a bad horse!” Well, we failed to buy a stallion, but presently the auctioneer got into his rostrum, and I, as always is the case with me, got intoxicated with the excitement, and having come to the conclusion, not without reason, that a horse would never make his reputation unless he had a few really first-rate mares by means of which to advertise his stock, determined to lay the foundation of a stud of my own by buying Chance, who was said to be the best Shire Mare that ever was foaled. I had no reason to regret the purchase, for she had never been beaten in the past from the day when she was champion foal, and was destined never to be beaten in the future. She won every prize for me, including the special gold medal given by Queen Victoria to commemorate her Presidentship of the Royal Agricultural Society at its Jubilee Show at Windsor in 1889. It may be interesting hereafter to note the price, 520 guineas. Prices have gone up since then. I wonder what such a mare would be worth to-day. As visitors at hotels are known by the numbers of their rooms and not by their names, so I became known in the agricultural world as the possessor of the famous mare. More than once at shows I heard the question and answer, “Who’s that man?” “Why, don’t you know him? He’s the owner of Chance.” Later on I bought two grand horses, Hitchin Conqueror, who was champion, and Laughingstock, reserve for champion, at the Shire Horse Show at Islington, and was the first man to win a championship there with an animal of his own breeding; which I did with a beautiful mare called Minnehaha, a daughter of Laughingstock; but she, poor thing, caught a cold at the Agricultural Hall and died of pneumonia. Her death was the beginning of a long run of bad luck after a course of immense good fortune.