Sorting dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS’ GAZETTE WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday, February 14, 1901.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XI, Issue 530, 14 February 1901, Page 10

Sorting dramatic REVIEW AND LICENSED VICTUALLERS’ GAZETTE WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday, February 14, 1901.

The city of Auckland is gaining AUCKLAND for itself an unenviable notoriety AND THE in the matter of the entertainIMPERIAL ment of the Imperial troops. TROOPS. This is not so much due to the attitude of the citizens of Auckland, but rather to the action of the selfconstituted committee, who have behaved and are behaving as if they were organising a picnic for school children, instead of welcoming in truly hosipitable manner men whom every true man and woman in the colony should delight in honouring. Luckily perhaps for our guests Auckland is the port of departure. They have been received with enthusiasm in every other of the colony, and though they may well feel chagrined and disappointed with the arrangements made by the men who pose as representatives of the people of Auckland, we trust that individual effort on the part of the people may partially remove the feeling of insulted honour, which every man of the Imperial troops must share. Instead of showing that spontaneous enthusiasm marking the reception of the troops in every other part of New Zealand, Auckland has gone about the business with a pettifogging meanness hardly good enough for the tea and bun scramble of a village school treat. Who is to blame for this ? In the first place the citizens. For they allowed the election of a committee almost entirely unrepresentative and absolutely unfit to have control of the arrangements. On such an occasion as the present all the leading men of Auckland should have given help and advice. Instead, we have a number of self-advertising individuals seeking to turn the reception of the Imperial troops into a tenth-rate kind of picnic. First of all we had the ridiculous idea of taking the men to Ellerslie, making them perform, and making the people pay an exorbitant admission fee. That ephemeral notion was quickly squashed. Then the idea of the Domain picnic was evolved and the people were to be charged admission to their own ground. The committee found that this action was illegal, so the charge for admission has been abandoned. The idea that Auckland must have something for its money has unfortunately not been abandoned,, The committee insists upon a quid pro quo, and our guests are to perform in return for the lunch rather ungenerously tendered. The question of alcoholic refreshment is dealt with elsewhere. But we must refer to it here, because in a tele« gram to His Worship the Mayor, Colonel Penton

sounds an ominous note of warning when he says: —‘*1 hear it has been decided to give no liquor at the lunch to be tendered to the Imperial troops at Auckland. This is quite contrary towhat has been done in other parts of the colony and would not be appreciated by our guests. It is quite likely that Colonel Wyndham might refuse to allow his men to accept such an invitation." The italics are ours. Such a telegram on such an occasion can only make the people of Auckland feel humiliated and ashamed.

Thb announcement of the retireMB ment of Mr John Dawson, qI JOHN Warren House, Newmarket, will DAWSON. , . .. cause little surprise to the ma-jonty of turfites, for it has been an open secret for some little time past that the veteran had determined to relinquish the arduous duties appertaining to the calling with which he has been associated for upwards of fifty years. He is the last of the “ mighty Dawsons,” four in number, namely, Thomas Dawson, born February 9,1804 ; Matthew Dawson, born January 9,1820 ; Joseph Dawson, born March 10, 1824; and John Dawson, born December 16, 1829. One of the most famous horses he ever had under his charge was, undoubtedly, Galopin, by Vedette, out of Flying Duchess, bred in 1872 by Mr Taylor Sharpe, who sold him as a foal to Mr Blenkiron, and at the sale of the Middle Park yearlings the latter gentleman disposed of him to Prince 1 Batthyany for 520 guineas. The colt suffered but one defeat during the whole of his Turf career, and that was when he succumbed to Plebeian in the Middle Park Plate, owing, it is said, to bad riding. His best performance was when he presented 71b and a dozen lengths’ beating to Mr Crawford’s Craigmillar, the winner of the St Leger, when Prince Batthyany determined t 0 withdraw him from the racecourse at the end of his three-year-old career. This was a pity, for all the great weight-for-age races would have been at his mercy, as they were to his mighty son, St Simon, about whom Fred Archer has left it on record that he was the best animal he ever had the leg-up on. Galopin was eventually knocked down under the hammer to Mr Chaplin for 8000 guineas, and few better bargains have been chronicled in the sale ring. When he died at Blankney, in June, 1899, he was twenty-eight years old, and his stock between 1879 and 1899 had won a-quarter of a million of money, appropriating 458 races.