Unless my ignorance has been abused, nothing remarkable has
happened at Doncaster in two thousand years, but this is itself a
distinction in that eventful England where so many things have
happened elsewhere. It is the market town of a rich farming
region, and has notable manufactures of iron and brass, of
sacking and linen, of spun flax and of agricultural machines and
implements. Otherwise, it is important only for its races, which
began there three hundred years ago, and especially for its St.
Leger Day, of which Lieutenant-General St. Leger became the
patron saint in 1778, though he really established his Day two
years earlier.
Doncaster is a mighty pleasant, friendly, rather modern, and
commonplacely American-looking town, with two-story trams gently
ambling up and down its chief avenues, in the leisurely English
fashion, and all of more or less arrival and departure at the
race-grounds. In our company the reader will have our appetites
for lunch, and if he will take his chance with us in the first
simple place away from the station, he will help us satisfy them
very wholesomely and agreeably at boards which seem festively set
up for the occasion, and spread with hot roast-beef and the plain
vegetables which accompany the national dish in its native land;
or he can have the beef cold, or have cold lamb or chicken cold.
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