It is a relief to turn from these mostly futile indoor pastimes to the robuster sports of the chase, the turf and the prize-ring. _Punch_ was fortunate in this period in having at his command, in Mr. Armour, an artist who restored the hunting pictures to a higher level of draughtsmanship than they had ever reached before. This implies no disparagement of the incomparable geniality of Leech's drawings, which in that respect have never been equalled, unless by Randolph Caldecott. But for the correct drawing of hounds, horses and riders, and for the discreet handling of the hunting landscape, Mr. Armour's equipment is above reproach. References to the turf in the early years of this period are mostly connected with Lord Rosebery. His success in winning the Derby with _Ladas_ in 1894 lends point to the "highly improbable anticipation" of _Punch's_ artist in which the Premier, in parson's garb, announces his conversion to the tenets of the Nonconformist conscience. In September of the same year we have the wail of a "disgusted backer" over the defeat of the favourite in the St. Leger:-- _Ladas, Ladas,_ Go along with you, do. I'm now stone-broke All on account of you. It wasn't a lucky Leger; I wish I'd been a hedger, Though you did look sweet Before defeat!-- But I've thoroughly done with you. In a more serious vein of irony _Punch_, in 1906, muses on the popularity of the turf and ends with this reflection:-- Is it not odd that hitherto no poet Has thought to mention how, with lord and serf, Whether they plunge thereon, or rest below it, There is no equaliser like the Turf? Whatso our claim, _The starting price is one, and Death the same_. The problem of the future of the horse exercises _Punch_ in 1911. Mr. Morrow's suggestions are always original, if fantastic, but he is on safe ground when he declares that the horse could always be of use in pageants. Motor-cars in ceremonial processions remind one of nothing so much as huge beetles. [Illustration: The picture of a boxer as published fifty years ago.] [Illustration: And the picture of a boxer as published to-day.] The great revival of boxing came at the end of the period, but in 1908 there is an amusing reference to Jack Johnson who, after defeating Tommy Burns, had become very unpopular in New South Wales, but, according to the _Daily Mail_, found consolation for adverse criticism in reading Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan. The statement was not thrown away on _Punch_, who, while welcoming the evidence that Jack Johnson was able to keep his temper sweet, observed that it would be sweeter still to know what Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan thought of his devotion. On the eve of the War, as I have noted in the first chapter, the man in the street was thinking a good deal more about Carpentier than the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. INDEX