My
father being sixty-four years old, and Dr. Mahaffy only thirty-
six, it was agreed that the Professor should be handicapped by
wearing cricket-pads, and by carrying a cricket bat. I was present
at the race, which came off in the gardens of the Viceregal Lodge,
before quite a number of people. My father won with the utmost
ease, to the delirious joy of the two policemen on duty, who had
never before seen a Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland racing a Professor
of Trinity College.
I myself must plead guilty to having entered for a "Veterans'
Race" two years ago, at the age of sixty-one, at some Sunday
School sports in Ireland. I ran against a butler, a gardener, two
foremen-mechanics, and four farmers, but only achieved second
place, and that at the price of a sprained tendon, so possibly the
"feeble of foot" of the song really is applicable to me after all.
The butler, who won, started off with the lead and kept it, though
one would naturally have expected a butler to run a "waiting"
race.
I was at Harrow with the Duke of Aosta, brother of the beautiful
Queen Margherita of Italy.
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