120 LIFE WITH THE TROTTERS, 



By the time I returned to the stand, the quarter stretch 

 was one mass of howling, screaming, and surging men, boys, 

 and women, and the grand stands looked as though they 

 had been depopulated by an earthquake. After a moment 

 or two of this sort of thing, the judges were able to get 

 partial quiet, and announced the heat, and then commenced 

 such an uproar as I had never up to that time seen or heard 

 of. As Barney led Rarus to the stable, a crowd gathered 

 about them, and it was with great difficulty that he could 

 get the horse through the people. The judges insisted on 

 my making a speech. Someone had advertised me as being 

 a great talker, but at that particular moment, and, as I 

 believe, the only time on record, I had lost my talk. To 

 me it seemed rather strange, that here over this race- track, 

 where I used to come in my boyhood days to play hookey 

 from school, and where I took my first lessons in the trot- 

 ting business, I should in after years accomplish a feat that 

 had been tried by the whole world, but in which no one had 

 ever before succeeded. Goldsmith Maid's record had 

 stood for six years, and I think the man that would not 

 have been proud to have the horse to beat it must, to say 

 the least, be a little cold blooded. 



My only regret in the whole affair was that Mr. Conklin, 

 my partner and friend, was detained at his home by illness, 

 and was not able to witness the result. But as soon as the 

 telegraph wire could be brought into use, he was made 

 acquainted with the fact that his wjldest dreams had been 

 more than realized. They afterward told me that every 

 fisherman on the Long Island shore blew his tin horn the 

 most of the night after the news had come that Rarus had 

 beaten Goldsmith Maid's record. I hardly think that 

 General Harrison received any more congrp^tulatory tele- 

 grams on the night of his election to the Presidency than I 

 did the night after Rarus went this mile in 2:13^. I soon 

 had from Mr. Conklin a dispatch in which he said: "Hur- 

 rah for Splan, and hurrah for Rarus." 



The following week, at Rochester, Rarus' s iDerformance 



