PITTSBURG PHIL 



which finished down the course, and after the race 

 he would say quietly to me : "If you can get the 

 mount on that the next time he runs he'll win," and 

 I cannot call to mind any instance when he failed to be 

 a wonderful prophet. 



It was absolutely wrong to believe one of the stories 

 — ^and there were thousands of them about — of his 

 " method." All those who spoke and wrote about him 

 said he betted entirely on information and could " fix " 

 races and riders — and trainers too. In fact, he was 

 said to have been a perfect bunch of tricks. But it 

 was all untrue. I was closer to him than any other 

 man. He would think and talk nothing but horse, 

 and no one knows better than I do that his success 

 was entirely due to his judgment and level-headed- 

 ness. He devoted all his hours to a study of racing, 

 didn't smoke and only drank a little white wine. 



He had a memory too wliich was always an envy 

 to me ; in fact his mind was a film from which nothing 

 could be blotted out. He simply was his own handi- 

 capper, and it is all nonsense about his employing 

 an army of men to get news. The only people he 

 employed were those who did commissions for him. 



We would sit down night after night and talk about 

 such a lot of things, and I enjoyed drawing him out 

 about his early days, and then he would get every- 

 thing out of me that I had to tell ; and he would 

 encourage me to go on and on. He had a quiet way 

 of convincing me, and somehow after a talk with him 

 I would go to bed happy, and dream that I was to go 

 east to New York. In those days that was as far as 

 my ambition reached. 



Phil's own early story — I got it in snatches from him 

 — was that when he was following his humble employ- 

 ment he used to read the papers always, and saw a 



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