[ILLUSTRATION]
[Description: 628EAF. Page 014. In-line Illustration. Image of well-dressed
men and women watching a horse race from high in the stands.]
Congress Hall, July 14.
To-day the great race was run. The great hotels are full, and
they poured out to the track a seething crowd—filling Lake
Avenue with dust and the grand stand with an enthusiastic
multitude.
The old white-haired wizzard of Kentucky was on the track
with Longfellow. The horse was as tranquil as an ex-dray
horse—no prancing, no kicking, no biting. Old John says the
little niggers play about him down in Kentucky, and that he
raises his feet as carefully as an elephant when the little rascals
tumble under him.
Kingfisher is a high-fly of a horse, full of mettle, and with
eyes red and snapping with passing. He is full of muscle and
as beautiful as—a horse! To-day these two kings of the turf
come together for the first time—Belmont with his silver feather
and the silver-headed home-spun farmer of Kentucky! What a
race! Distance two and a quarter miles. Thousands of dollars
changed hands. Harper was offered $60,000 for Longfellow at
the Branch, and he said if his pet should loose the Saratoga cup
he would lead from the track a ruined horse. Jake bobbed
around proudly on the back of Kingfisher, and Bob Swim sat
grimly on the back of Longfellow.
The race started.
Belmont was on the grand stand, dressed in a white hat and
silver feather, and old John Harper upon the ground, dressed in
an old slouch hat and a suit of home-spun. Pell-mell they went
as the white flag dropped, “Longfellow moving with long,
regular strides, with clumsy head stuck straightforward. Kingfisher
started with a quick, nervous movement, making six
movements to Longfellow's five. Straight as an arrow Bob
Swim reined Longfellow across Kingfisher's advance to his accustomed
inside track, taking the lead. There he kept it, dead
to the applause of ten thousand spectators. That first quarter
was his salvation.
“I told Bob,” sagely observed old Harper, “that Longfellow
would run the first quarter faster than any horse ever did it
before.”
“How after that?” we asked.
“Why, he'll keep on gettin' better an' better all the time!”
And so he did. The second mile was done in 1:40—time only
equalled by Gladiator and Prioress, and that on English turf.
On they ran, the vast crowd shouting lustily, as now and then
the “Fisher”—closed the gap a little. Belmont stood up and
leaned forward, surveying the field as a General would survey a
battle-field, while the little gray-haired stooping Harper looked
on like a stoic, his sharp gray eyes only twinkling as Bob shot in
to the victory.
The old Kentucky farmer took his eighty thousand dollars as
quietly as you would buy a morning newspaper, while the great
swaying masses shrieked and waved their handkerchiefs like a
great sea of humanity covered with fluttering sails.
[ILLUSTRATION]
[Description: 628EAF. Page 016. In-line Illustration. Image of ladies watching a horse race
with opera-glasses in their hands.]
The Ladies on the Grand Stand
BETTING.
Mrs. B—, of Boston, and old habituée of Saratoga, is a High
Church Unitarian and consequently don't bet at the races. She
will not even hazard a dozen gloves when the favorites are
neck and neck, and when thousands of ladies are standing up
and waving their handkerchiefs in wild enthusiasm. To-day,
when everybody was getting wild over Kingfisher and Longfellow,
Mrs. B— pulled our coat-sleeve, and meekly asked us
“to please not bet.”
“Why, Mrs. B —! a Christian can't help betting now.
There's Dr. Corey—yes, and your own Dr. Hepworth—recklessly
hazarding dozens of gloves this moment!”
“My old minister betting!” exclaimed Mrs. B—, “impossible!
I'll bet you a dozen gloves he hasn't bet to-day!”
Mrs. Ba—, (there! I've almost told her name) is afraid the
Boston people will hear of her watering-place worldliness, and so
we all promised not to say a word about it.
