AND OTHER SKETCHES 235 



A NOTABLE RACE ON THE ICE. 



Do I remember the Bolly Lewis race? Well, I should 

 rather think I do. Talk about a hurricane, old chap, why 

 the knowing ones were struck by a real old-fashioned bliz- 

 zard. Their pockets were turned inside out and only that 

 the most of them had return tickets, Toronto friends 

 would have had to find free board for them until the 

 spring. 



Do I remember particulars of the race? Yes, I have 

 the record clearly stamped on my memory. The way it 

 came about was this: The present ^'Charley" Boyle was 

 rusty for want of something to do, and to pass away the 

 days and make a few dollars at the same time, he con- 

 cluded to get up a winter trotting meeting. It was in 

 1872, a genuine old-timer, thermometer-on-a-strike, nearly 

 all the time in the neighborhood of zero, and snow enough 

 to let one look down his neighbor's chimney. Toronto 

 Bay was frozen about three feet thick, and Boyle decided 

 to make a track opposite the present Union Station. 

 This was done, and though snowstorms came with almost 

 daily regularity, the scrapers were kept busily at work, 

 and when race day came round the going was 0. K. The 

 amount of money hung up in purses was liberal and the 

 entries in all the classes were away above the average. 

 The race, however, about which the speculation was 

 briskest was the ''free-for-all." There were four Cana- 

 dian representatives engaged in it, and up to the day be- 

 fore the race nobody expected foreign competition, but 

 at the eleventh hour the well-known trotter Bolly Lewis 

 arrived, and so great was his reputation on the ice that 

 the event was considered by many a foregone conclusion 

 in his favor. How he happened to come this way is well 

 worth recording. The eastern parties who owned him 

 had sold him to a person in Detroit, and, according to 

 agreement, had to deliver him there by a certain day. 



