174 MEMOIR. 



story, when Eloise won at Detroit, has been told. It is 

 one of many that could be resurrected. Another sample 

 dates from the fall of 1895, when he made an appointment 

 with Col. Edwards and the writer to put in a day with 

 Pat Shank, at Litchfield, O. A visit to Pat's was one of 

 the Colonel's hobbies, the mere thought of a trip making 

 him bubble over with good nature, and, with all of his 

 tact, he had more than his share of it. The train was 

 due to leave Cleveland at seven, and, when it pulled out, 

 Fasig was not on board. At dinner, while the Colonel 

 was busy complimenting Pat's housekeeper on the flavor 

 of her chicken pie and the crispness of the biscuits, a boy 

 rushed in with a telegram. It read, "Missed train ; will 

 be with you at two-thirty. Fasig." On his arrival, we 

 learned that he met a cross-eyed girl with red hair when 

 he stepped off a St. Clair street car at Water street. Up 

 to that time he was trying to catch the train. All he had 

 to do was to walk down the Water street hill, but the girl 

 with the fatal combination made him fly the track. The 

 average man, who is bothered with such scruples, is some- 

 what diffident in making reference to them. Fasig was 

 just the reverse, and nothing pleased him more than spin- 

 ning a yarn in which he had a little the worst of it, even 

 when there was some money or pride at stake ; but nothing 

 nettled him so much as to have some one, that he did not 

 lean to, laugh over the same stories in which he was the 

 shining mark. The following is a sample that he told S. 

 Freeman one afternoon at Bennyscliffe : 



"I have been on the speedway but little, and that little 

 has not encouraged me to long for a more extended expe- 

 rience. Once I drove the chestnut gelding Rob Roy, 

 2 123^, that I purchased for an English gentleman, paying 

 $1,000 in cold cash for him. He was supposed to be a fast 



