290 THE HOESE. 



tions were in no way equal to the occasion ; above all, they con- 

 tinued to sell tickets after they knew that several thousand more 

 persons had purchased them than they could transport. A 

 train, bearing over two thousand passengers, did not reach the 

 course until after the first heat, and hundreds who had pur- 

 chased tickets, despairing of reaching the course in the cars, 

 started on foot, and reached it before them. At half-past 

 eleven o'clock there were not less than five thousand persons 

 waiting a conveyance by the cars at the Brooklyn terminus, all 

 of whom had purchased tickets. Under these circumstances, 

 it will not be very surprising to any one to hear that upon the 

 return of the cars after the race, the indignant passengers rolled 

 several of them off the track over the hill, and smashed others, 

 while " a perfect mash " was made of the ticket office. The 

 race was a golden harvest to the hack, cab, and omnibus 

 proprietors. The anxiety to reach the course was so great that 

 ten dollars were offered for a standing-up place in a charcoal 

 cart ! Our contemporary of the " Couriei- and Enquirer " thus 

 pleasantly describes his own " peculiar position ;" — 



" Finding that our tiohet was valueless, we engaged a dech 

 passage on an omnibus ; and never have we witnessed so curi- 

 ous an exhibition as the road to the course presented. We have 

 neither space nor time to describe it ; but the reader may form 

 some idea of the anxiety to get ahead, when we state that be- 

 side the thousands that were footing it with railroad tickets in 

 their pockets, and the immense number in all sorts of vehicles, 

 we overtook a charcoal cart, from which the cry of ch-a-r-co-al 

 was heard to proceed in full chorus ; and on getting alongside 

 some twenty heads were obtruded, presenting faces which we 

 readily imagined had once been white, but which were now of 

 the most perfectly sable hue. Tliey were a set of very clever 

 fellows, who deemed themselves fortunate to have procured even 

 this mode of conveyance to the race-course." 



Having engaged a carriage the day previous, we were ena- 

 bled to reach the course at an early hour. The roads from town 

 were thronged almost the entire distance with a procession of 

 carriages and frequently with several abreast, all crammed. It 

 would require the pen of the " Troubadour of the Corporation 

 Dirt Carts " to give a description of them. Flatbush wagons 



