TWO CURIOUS VICTORIES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3739, 10 July 1883, Page 4

TWO CURIOUS VICTORIES.

"Yo Avho listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue Avith eagerness the phantoms of hope, attend "—as somo modern Rasselas might exclaim —" to the history " of tho two victories gained in the City and Suburban Stakes at Epsom by the noble OAvner of Aldrich and Roysterer. Tho handicap Avon on April 29 by Lord Rosobery's Roysterer has existed for exactly a generation; nor need avc mention that among- the three-and-thirty horses by which—to use a favorite locution of the American turf—"the prize has been captured," afar larger proportion of extreme outsiders than of prominent favorites is naturally numbered. No more dangerous course, Chester perhaps excepted, exists in these islands than that over Avhich the City and Suburban Stakes arc run, and it has often filled foreign .sportsmen, and especially those hailing from the United States and from Australia, with astonishment that "England's historical race" (as it Avas once tho fashion to designate the Derby) should be decided on ground more adapted for what our Canadian brethren call -'tobogging " than for horse-racing. It is to the peculiar conformation of the Epsom course that Lord Rosebcrry owes his A*i<;tory in the City and Suburban of 187-1, as the accident Avhich befell Lemuos, avlio slipped up and fell at Tottenham Corner (interfering thereby Avith tho chances of two other horses) gave Aldrich an opportunity of which liis jockey w:is not slow to avail himself. It has already been told in these columns how a noble member of the Jockey Club dreamed the night before the City and Suburban of 1871 that a horse called "The Teacher," and currying Lord Rosobery's colors, bore away the prize. Upon mentioning his Chaldean dream to Lord Rosebcrry, Lord Vivian learned that Aldrich had onco been called "The Teacher," but that, be his name Avhat it might, tho son of Lecturer had been beaten so disgracefully in his trial as to make his victory in the highest degree improbable. The same concatenation of circumstances seems to have repeated itself in the case of last Wednesday's Avinncr. Roysterer, although one of the best bred horses that ever looked through a bridle, had, doAvn to the morning of that day, performed as a racehorse in a manner so unbecoming his high lineage that odds of 40 and 7)0 to 1 were freely ottered against him. It Avas knoAvn, moreover, that he had been beaten off in his trial, and one of the shrcAvdest backers of horses in England congratulated himself not a littlo upon his astuteness aa-licu he succeeded in persuading a friend to take off bis hands by far tho larger portion of a epeculatiA'o bet of uOOO to 12 about Roysterer, taken some three or four weeks since. To show the fallacy of turf prophecies, it needed but the additional fact that out of courtesy to Lord Rosebery, in whoso box at Epsom ho had a place, the King of Holland should hiA-cst £20 at the last moment upon the animal carrying the primrose and roso hoops. Readers of our sporting- contemporaries luu-e long been familiar with the cry " The prophets floored to the man," but that they should be floored by a. monarch advanced in yoar.s, who knows no more about tho shape, make, and condition of a racehorse than about tlio interpretation of the cuneiform characters upon tho Rosetta stone, is such a paradox as to incline us to agree Avith the Avarning, given long ago by Sir Charles Banbury to a knot of youngsters from Cambridgo Avho camo to Newmarket in the hopo of -•spotting winners—tho Avarning being corn-eyed in the four pregnant words : "That way madness lies."—Daily Telegraph.