DAN PATCH 123 



That was accepted and if my memory is not at fault we 

 were paid $7,800 for that mile. 



"Mr. Savage was a great believer in Friday and thirteen 

 and if any time he could book Dan for Friday or for the 

 thirteenth of the month he would pass over all other offered 

 days and dates. He told me he had been uniformly success- 

 ful on those days. One time when Dan was in his prime his 

 owner told me he was mailing 100,000 lithographs of him 

 broadcast in the United States. He named a railroad for 

 him. Dan was known by every little boy wherever he went 

 and people by the thousands visited his stall. There was no 

 place we exhibited him that he did not increase the attendance 

 immensely. 



"The day he went his mile at Lexington in 1 :55^/^ Mr. 

 M. E. Sturgis, now dead and who had sold Dan to Mr. Savage 

 asked me if the horse was for sale. I told him I thought 

 not. He then told me to wire Mr. Savage that he would 

 give him three times what he paid for him. The offer was 

 courteously declined. Dan made money for eveiy owner 

 he had from the breeder on to the end. Mr. Dan Messner, 

 his breeder, sold him to Mr. Sturgis for $20,000; Mr. Sturgis 

 sold him to Mr. Savage for $45,000 and he earned in exhi- 

 bitions $120,000 for Mr. Savage, to say nothing of the way 

 he increased his owner's business and that increase was 

 phenomenal. 



"I cannot close this story without mentioning the way 

 Dan proved his gameness to me in two performances at 

 Allentown, Pa., over the half-mile track there. It was a 

 good course and Dan went his mile to sulky in 2:01 then 

 in forty-five minutes I brought him out to wagon to beat 

 2:11 and went the mile in 2:05'^. I had never before 

 started him to wagon on a half-mile track and I discovered 

 right away that he hit the outside wheel going round the 

 turns. There was no way to prevent it by changing the 

 hitch so I took him to the middle of the track and put a 

 runner on each side of him and he went the mile that way. 



"Great horses must have great care-takers. I doubt if 

 any horse ever rose to real greatness who was not blessed 

 that way. And I want to say that Charles Plummer, who 



