AND OTHER SKETCHES 77 



SUPEESTITION AND LUCK. 



At different times I have written about luck and 

 superstitious belief, citing cases of well-known turfmen 

 who, on race days, were ever ready to be impressed by 

 circumstances which at another time would not for a 

 moment arrest their attention. Poor Doctor Coleman, a 

 few of whose doings I have chronicled elsewhere, would 

 never, even by those who knew him most intimately, have 

 been called a superstitious man; yet I remember on one 

 occasion when passing with him through the gates of 

 Mutchmore Park on race day, meeting a squint-eyed 

 citizen face to face. That settled it in the Doctor's mind. 

 He declared he could not win a bet that day, and though 

 he tried it in four out of the five events that colored the 

 card, he never selected a winner. 



Uncle Joe Grand, whose jolly, bluff, hearty manner 

 and mirthful mind was not streaked to any preceptible 

 extent with superstitious belief, would go two blocks out 

 of his way on race day to avoid meeting a cross-eyed man 

 or woman. Major Peel, at one time known to nearly 

 every racing man in Canada, would not bet a cent on a 

 race if he happened to hear a cock crow late the night 

 before. Here's a question for you that you can all 

 answer: How many of your acquaintances will walk 

 under a leaning ladder without flinching? It does not 

 require a race meeting to make them shy of that deal. I 

 stood one day at the corner of a street in Toronto for 

 fully fifteen minutes to settle a wager I had made with a 

 friend on the same subject. 



I bet him a ''bottle," never mind what was to be in it, 

 that two out of every four men who passed down Yonge 

 street would dodge the ladder leaning against a build- 

 ing. The bottom of the ladder reached to within three 

 feet of the outer edge of the sidewalk, so that it was a 

 deliberate shirk if a fellow selected the narrow path 



