THE FIRST RACK. 19 



"In the town of Z there was a square plot of 



about two hundred acres off to the north end that was 

 called 'the commons.' No one knew who owned it, 

 except possibly the tax collector, and as it never raised 

 anything but sour sorrels and a crop of short curly 

 grass which turned brown and dried when the sun 

 struck it in July, it was used as a field for cricket, base- 

 ball and lacrosse. Football had not as yet broken into 

 that latitude, while golf was still smouldering among 

 the hills in Scotland. At the lower end of 'the com- 

 mons' there was a cone-shaped hill, one side of which 

 had been worked as a gravel pit, and around the hill 

 there was a race track, which I suppose was a mile in 

 circumference. It was laid off on the turf and defined 

 by a furrow on each side of the course which was laid 

 out so long before my time that the mark made by the 

 plough had grown over and left only a slight de- 

 pression in the sod. The judges' stand, four uprights 

 with cross pieces on which four or five boards were 

 thrown, was located on the outside of the track and at 

 a point from which about three-fourths of it could be 

 seen. As for the spectators, they took in the races from 

 the top of the hill, leisurely walking around the cone 

 while the gallopers fought it out between the two fur- 

 rows at the base. It was on this track I saw my first 

 race and, strange enough, it was the last one run 

 over it. The starters were Sorrel Billy, a white-faced 

 gelding owned by the son of a wagonmaker who was 

 doing his level best to make an honest living in the 

 livery business, and Bay Frank, a gelding with a long 

 tail owned by a hotel keeper on the other side of the 



river, which divided the town of Z into two halves 



and two factions on anything that ever came up from 



