CHARLES MATHEWS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2057, 27 September 1880, Page 3

CHARLES MATHEWS.

The elder Charles Mathews related the following anecdote (of a puzzling description) at the table of his friend Theodore Hook, and in a manner in which Charles Mathews only could relate it: —An Irish surgeon, named M , who kept a running horse, applied to him on one occasion for his opinion respecting a disputed race. “ Now, sur,” commenced the gentleman, “ Mr Mathews, as you say you understand horse-racing, and so you do, I’ll just thank you to give me a bit of an opinion, the least taste in life of one. Now, you’ll mind me, sur, my horse had won the first hate ; well, sur, and then ho won the second hate ; well ” “ Well, sir,” said Mathews, “if he won both the heats, he won the race.” “ Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all. You see, he won the first hate, and then, somehow, my horse fell down (that’s not himself), but the other came up ” “And passed him, I suppose,” said Mathews. “Not at all, sur, not at all; you mistake the gist of the matter. Now, you see, my horse had lost the first hate ” “Won it, you mean; at least won it you said.” “ Won it! Of course I said I won it; that is, the other horse won it, and the other horse, that is, my horse, won the second hate ; when another, not himself, comes up and tumbles down—but stop ! I’ll demonstrate the circumstances ocoularly. There —you keep your eye on that decanter ; now, you’ll remember that’s my horse ; that is, I mane it’s not my horse, it’s the other ; and this cork—you observe this cork—this cork’s my horse, and my horse, that is, this cork, has won the first hate ———” “ Lost it, you said, sir, just now,’’ groaned Mathews, rapidly approaching a state of complete bewilderment. “Lost it, sur, by no manes; won it, sur, I maintain (’pon my word, your friend, Mr Stephen Price, there, that’s grinning so, is a mighty bad specimen of an American!) ; no, sur, icon it, I said ; and now, I want your opinion about the hate, that is not the hate, but the race, you know ; not, that is, the first hate, but the second hate, that would be the race when it was won.” “ Why really, my dear sir,” replied the referee, “ I don’t precisely see the point upon which ” “Hod bless me, sur, do you pretind to understand horse-racing, and can’t give a plain opinion on a simple matter of hates! Now, sur, I’ll explain it once more. The stopper, you are aware, is my horse; but the other horse—that is the other mhn’s horse,” &c. And so poor M—• — went on for more than an hour, and no one could tell at last which horse it was that fell; whether he had won the first hate, or lost it; whether his horse was the decanter or the cork ; or what the point was upon which the sporting surgeon wanted an opinion.