were legion. Could I give any description?
I never heard of her again. I leave the story now to my readers as a problem. It is the one fact in my life which I am unable to explain in any way.
I must now relate how I lost the editorship of the Evening News. All the while I was in Rome I received weekly statements from the Evening News and knew that it was going on all right, but without improving under the assistant whom I had picked, an Irishman named Ruble.
When I reached England, Lord Folkstone told me that Mr. Kennard. the banker and director who supplied most of the money, had come to have a great opinion of Rubie, my assistant; thought he could do the work quite as well as I could, and, in fact, intended to make a row about my having prolonged my holiday in order to put Rubie in my place as managing editor. I was astonished and amused. I knew that Rubie could not do the paper at all, and I had really worked with all my heart and soul at it, and hadn't taken breathing time or a holiday in the three years.
I meant to take up the whole problem of journalism in a big way when I came back. I wanted to group all the police courts in London in sixes under able heads, and so fill up the whole paper from one end to the other with astonishing stories of London life. I dreamed of a morning paper as well and a million circulation for each; and I would have done it all, but when I came back, I found that success had turned Kennard's head. He would have to pay me a share of the profits; he would always have me as a master in his paper; and as I had prolonged my holiday without leave, I had given him the opportunity he needed. I was to be discharged-decently because of Lord Folkestone-still, to be got rid of.
We had a board meeting at the Evening News and Kennard said he wanted to act quite fairly: he thought that I had made the paper successful, and he was quite willing to give me a thousand pounds as a solatium.
One incident is perhaps worth relating here: I brought some friends together who offered Coleridge Kennard some forty thousand pounds for the paper- more than all the money spent on it during my editorship; he refused the offer. I thereupon accepted his offer of a thousand pounds and got up to leave the board room. At this Lord Folkestone rose also, reminded Coleridge Kennard that he had put a good many thousands of pounds in the paper, that he had selected me as editor, and declared now that he was perfectly satisfied with my work. He preferred, he said, to leave the paper with me and lose whatever money he had put into it. In the most charming way, he added,
'Come on, Frank, they do not want us,' and took me out to his mail-phaeton.
Three months after I left the Evening News Kennard met me at the corner of Grosvenor Street and begged me to come back to my old position on the News. He told me that the circulation of the paper had fallen off in the most extraordinary way. I smiled at him. 'I warned you, Kennard,' I said, 'that things quickly built up would fall down nearly as quickly, but I am quite happy in the editorship of the Fortnightly Review and I will not go back.'
Two months later Kennard confessed to me that he had sold the Evening News for a paltry two thousand five hundred pounds to Harms-worth: he had lost some thirty-eight thousand by discharging me.
CHAPTER VII
All this while in London I had one passion: the desire to know and measure all the men of ability in art and literature I could meet. I had, however, a myriad pleasures, among which I must put first the love of horses, of riding and driving, I mean. I still kept up another dozen of athletic amusements; I ran and walked regularly and boxed for at least half an hour each morning, just to keep myself perfectly fit, as I shall explain later.
A London newspaper once published the fact that I was the only editor who drove fine horses tandem down Fleet Street. From 1885 to 1895 or so I had, I think, some of the best driving horses in London. I should like to give the photo of one of them at the end of this chapter; the mare in question won first prize at the Richmond Horse Show, and was a very beautiful creature-wellformed with high spirit, and in her light American buggy an extraordinary mover; but alas! no picture could do her justice.
All these ten or twelve years in London I had from three to six horses for riding and driving; and I had the carriages built in America simply for lightness and perfection of spring. English carriages are usually very heavy and strong because of the bad old roads of the past, but the good modern road allows one to have lighter carriages, and is therefore better for the horses. I had a mail-phaeton built in New York and sent across which weighed less than four hundred pounds, so that two horses could draw it without feeling its weight, and were therefore free to show perfect paces. I was often stopped by Englishmen in Hyde Park wishing to know where I got the horses and the featherweight phaeton.
In a little portrait I wrote of Cunninghame Graham, I told of a race we had in Hyde Park one morning, in which I beat his Argentine pony rather easily with an English horse. Graham has written since that he has no recollection of such a race; perhaps if he had won he would have remembered it.
Whenever I think of horses I cannot but recall Blue Devil, the mare I have told about when I was a cowboy in Texas. She was a wonderful companion! I could throw my hat down and send her back for it: after five miles or more she would go straight to the spot and bring it to me in her mouth. When I was at the University of Lawrence, Kansas, which lies outside the town on a hill, I used to ride her up without bridle or saddle, then dismount and turn her loose, and she would wander about, eating a little grass from time to time, and as soon as I whistled she would come racing to me.
In her honor I must tell that I once made a bet in Lawrence that I could ride one hundred miles on this one horse and walk fifty in twenty-four hours.
When it came to the trial, it was a hot July day and I was dreadfully afraid that I had over-rated what Blue Devil could do, so I picked the cool night for her and rode her without a saddle; but about the fiftieth mile she fairly ran away with me just to teach me that she could do what was required of her; and at the hundredth mile, which was completed under eleven hours, she bit me on the shoulder playfully and began to eat her oats as if she had just left the stable; her heart was nearly as big as her body. I almost came to grief walking the fifty miles because one of my boots gave out about the twentyfifth mile and I had to walk the rest of the distance in my stockings. However, the ride is on record; not a bad achievement for a boy of seventeen!
The English know far more about horses than any other European people, but even in this cult they have been surpassed by the Americans, who first taught them that jockeys should sit as far forward on the withers as possible, and not in the small of the back. Even Fred Archer, great jockey though he was, was not nearly as good as some American jockeys who came after him and showed their skill on English race courses.
Just in the same way, prize-fighting was further developed in America in ten years' time than in England in a hundred.
I wish the English would understand how their love of tradition limits them in almost everything.
I can't leave this talk about horses without mentioning the advent of the motor-car. It was in the winter of 1895-96 that I went from London as usual to the Riviera, and there saw a motor-car for the first time. A man had brought it to Monte Carlo, and having lost his money, offered it for sale: it was a Georges Richard, seven horse- power, driven by belts. At once I tried it and fell in love with the speed and smoothness of its motion; finally I bought it, giving, I think, fifteen thousand francs for it, or about six hundred pounds.
I used it for almost a month to visit all the beauty spots of the Riviera, and they are numberless and wonderful. When I had drunk my fill of natural beauty, I started over Grasse and Digne to go to Paris. I remember dining late at Grasse and going on by night: we lost first one belt and then another on the road and had to hunt about in the dark for them before we could go on. Still it was evident to me that the motor-car would soon do away with horses: it was the most wonderful mode of traveling that man at that time had discovered.
It took me over a week to reach Paris, and three days to go from Paris to Calais; and when I started out from Dover to go to London, my difficulties began: the very first policeman stopped me and took me to the station; it was there decided that I must have a man to walk in front of the motor with a red flag. I acquiesced apparently, but declared to the police inspector that I would not go beyond four miles an hour and would use all care; and so at last I was allowed to start out for London. On the way I met a gentleman with a pair of horses who turned back at once
