AND OTHER SKETCHES 153 



JONATHAN SCOTT'S 400 TO 1 SHOT. 



Old Jonathan Scott died in the General Hospital in 

 this city about three years ago. Well, the end must come 

 to all of us, and the man who has swung around the circle 

 for nigh on to eighty years may expect that he is coming 

 near to the end of his career. Did I say eighty years in 

 connection with old Jonathan 1 Well, it is a hard matter 

 to guess. He for years has been like a gnarled and with- 

 ered oak — one that had withstood the blasts of centuries 

 and whose knotted and rugged surface gave no indication 

 of the earlier years of the world's history in which it was 

 a sapling. 



Jonathan was on the turf fifty years ago. Nearly 

 forty years back I remember him in charge of the Halton 

 stable, the property of Mr. James White. He was then a 

 very lame man. It was a difficult task for him to move 

 around, but with all the drawbacks of painful physical 

 infirmities, he was as cheerful a man as ever wore shoe 

 leather. He raced east, west, north and south; had gal- 

 lopers through the bushes on the half-mile tracks ; raced 

 at Saratoga, Monmouth Park, old Jerome and on every 

 race course in Canada from Quebec in the east to Wind- 

 sor in the west, and Jonathan was no slouch in the busi- 

 ness, either. He had a heap of horse sense; had not a 

 lazy bone in his body ; was up with the lark in the morn- 

 ing and was ever faithful to his employer's interests. 

 He did what no Canadian trainer, either before or after 

 him, has accomplished. He started Balbriggan at Sara- 

 toga, against whom as good as 400 to 1 was on tap. The 

 dsLj before the race he advised two or three other Cana- 

 dian trainers who were talking with him, to have a bet 

 on his mare Balbriggan, the property of Mr. 'Brien, of 

 Montreal. They laughed at his pretentions, but the old 

 man, solemn-visaged as an owl and earnest as a penitent 



