Show u A Lost Opportamty Every lime I read in the I sporting col unns as I i have read I good deal I frc uently the figures quoted in the future books agtiinst t candidates entered forth for-th big horeu racing cvents of the coming com-ing season Ice the Brooklyn and the Suburban handlrapF J 1 feel 1 like edging oil to some quiet place and omitting a number ot deep groans of siMfcommls ration and Ive been feeling that iay or a number of years now remarked one o the Washington correspondents I never gave any countenance or en crtainment whatever to the horse bug hut I have often been surrounded hy IndIviduals In-dIviduals who had the microbe In Its most virulent form One winter its Retting on to be a decade now since the occurrence four fellows who happened to be ling In New York at the time decided de-cided that theyd had enough of board In houses and took a bachelor Hat together to-gether I was one of them Of the oth el r three one was n newspaper man em iloyed by the same paper that curried ny name on Its roll another was a cur oonist who has since achieved fame and the fourth was an expert photograph photo-graph retoucher who was > cmployed by me of the noted portraitmakers of the big town We chipped in for the fur 15111111 of the flat engaged a Jap cook and got along firstrate except that the horse alIt of the photographic retoucher made the three of us who didnt have the racing 1 fever very tired He was a confirmed piker on the horse and all of his spare change except ex-cept what he put Into the pot toward he running of the Hat went on the po iles We tried from the beginning to guy him out of his mania for the gee gees hut It couldnt be done He had race horses on his mind to such an cx tent that they Interfered with his busl ness and kept him poor all the time into time bargain And while he was an exceedingly ex-ceedingly intelligent and companionable chap lie got HO wild on the subject of the horses that he couldnt talk about anything else He began to entertain lie belief that some day or other he would make t tremendous strike on the horses and find himself suddenly rich rind he fell into the habit of telling us what lie Intended to do with the money after he had pulled off his great coup on he race track All during that winter when we were holding down the bachelor bach-elor fat he was sending his velvet earn logs out ot a turf commissioner to be ilriced on horses running at the Caliber ila tracks and all of our eloquence was wasted w hen we tried to point out to him what an idiot he was making of himself Thats all right hed say fanatically cal Ill hit it right one of these days and then you fcllowsll be sorry that you didnt string along with me on the game Well along toward the windup of the winter this chap came bursting into the fiat one morning at 2 or 15 oclock after the other three of us had turned in and he woke us up to show us a letter let-ter lie had received on the day before from a friend of his living somewhere in the South The man who wrote the letter said that he had lately run across Fred Foster the owner of the horse Dr Rice and stated that Foster was convinced con-vinced that Dr nice had a good chance to win the Brooklyn handicap Now the Brooklyn handicap was due to be run some time early in June and It was then early In February Moreover More-over we knew as everybody who paid any attention whatever to even the most famous of the horses then racing on the American turf that that same Dr 1 nIce was regarded as a hopeless cripple after breaking down the previous pre-vious fall and that he had about is much chance of winning even n Felling race as a fat man So you can imagine what kind oC a reception we gave that fellow when he broke in the Hat that cold February morning und woke the three t o us for the purpose of showing us a mcasley letter predicting the success suc-cess of a crippled horse that was to run In a race maybe about six months later la-ter on Ve threw everything that cmne handy at him and then locked him into his own room Tie was still ful lob the subject of Dr Piccs chances for the Brooklyn handicap handi-cap when we got up along toward noon and we had to squelch s him again when he started to tall about the faroff race raceWell he managed to say Dr IMco is now GO to 1 In the future books and if you fellows know anything about I how good Fred Foster is at patching up cripples youll commence right now to Invest your chicken feed on the old skate to win the handicap lies going to get the money for a sure thing And he kept It I up and harped on It for days and weeks afterward until we hated to see him around Meanwhile he was investing every dollar that he could scrape in the future betting on Dr Rice which remained at DO to I them the-m r of the books having the Idea that there was only about one chance in n hundicd that so confirmed n cripple as Dr Rice would ever reach the post In the big event This photographic retoucher had inherited in-herited a nice little home somewhere up in New TeiMy and one day he crowed over to the town where the home was situated and Clustered a 5500 mortgage on I Tie divided the COO up Into live parts and sent the money around to five different I future bookmakers who were posting I the odds on the Brooklyn handi cap taking the Dr nice end of it When he came home to time fiat and announced an-nounced to us what he hind done we began 10uncel gan to seriously believe that he was crazy and we wercnl backward In tell iiur him so weren1 Thats all right maybe T am bughouse bug-house but when yon fellows see me backing a dray up to the Gravesend race track gate In June next to pull my o000 back to New York youll be kicking yourselves for not taking my tip and standing to win a bundle on the old nag hes going to just walk In thats mtlllmn getting reports about him every week or so and I hear that hell burn the track up when they send him to the t post Jlesldes the 500 mortgage money that he had placed in the future books on Dr 1 Rice the other change that he had scattered round on the same Investment Invest-ment made him stand to win 15 OOI ont the on-t event in case his old plug won the race and how we did Inugh the three 0 us when hed lapse into a day dream and begin to muse over the swell photographic pho-tographic plant that he Intended to start on Fifth avenue when that Sl5000 fell into his lap Well when the day for the t race came around the photographic re toucher hogged so hard for he t throe of us to accompany him down to the Gravesoml track t that we yielded more probably for the fun of Joshing him about his SSOOOtojret than because we were interested in the outcome of the race from a sporting point of view We found that DI Rice was at only G to 1 instead oC GO to 1 in the betting on the afternoon of the nice Tel that photographic retoucher his had his swell establishment in operation on Fifth avenue for a i good many years now and lies more than doubled his JSfiOOO winning on old Dr Rice who finished In front of the Brooklyn handicap proocFsion on three legs literally after Clifford the favorite favor-ite had been left at the post Thats the reason I hale to read these future figures fig-ures nowadays hey mc too reminiscent of a lost chance Washington Star |