She had not had a career of uninterrupted success. And this fact, in a mare, in no way alienates the affection of the people. On the contrary, sympathy flows out to the defeated filly. During the autumn, in the Doncaster St. Leger, she and the Derby winner were destined to meet. I cannot recall a year in which such universal interest was taken in a race. My own household were on tip-toe, and we awaited the result with bated breaths. We were all for “the mare.” There was no rapid dissemination of news in those days such as we “suffer under” to-day. Indeed, we were lucky, or thought ourselves lucky, if we happened to hear a result before the delivery of the morning papers at about ten o’clock next day. We were all at tea on the evening of the great event. It was one of those quiet, warm, brooding days of early autumn, when sounds travel to a great distance. Suddenly we heard the crunching of feet far off, marching up the carriage drive and, we all—“just a wheen callants,” you know—cocked our ears. Was it the news? The footsteps halted at the open front door, and the voice of a neighbour called out loudly, “The mare won by three lengths.” And then, what a cheer burst from us! I should like to hear the same again, in some modern household to-day. But this is but “an old song that sung itself to me, sweet in a boy’s day dream,” and we will pass to a consideration of the few Queens of the Turf in Australia since the beginning of things. We need not revert to the Bessy Bedlams of the early ’forties of the last century, nor the Alice Hawthorns of before the flood. Worthy mares, no doubt, and reverenced by their worshippers, but probably slow gallopers compared to the fliers of to-day.