20 LIFE WITH THE TKOTTEES. 



not SO much for my pool ticket, but because I had become 

 thoroughly interested in my business and was anxious to 

 learn all I could. Tempest won easily, and ye were aU 

 correspondingly joyful. 



I count among the happiest days of my life those that 

 I spent as Jimmy' s pupil. While he was willing to work 

 all the time himself he gave me a fair share of time to sleep 

 and eat, go fishing, and run foot races with the other boys. 

 In those days I was considerable of a sprinter, and could step 

 oft" any distance, from a hundred yards up, and always get 

 my share of the money, thereby replenishing my little store 

 of cash, which in the case of rubbers is never too large. 

 Jimmy was always willing to back me for his pile against 

 anybody of my size or age, even going so far on one occa- 

 sion as to match me to lift a weight ; which match, by the 

 way, I won. 



After spending some time under Jimmy's tuition, I was 

 thought capable of taking charge of a horse myself, and was 

 given a chestnut gelding called William H. Taylor, owned 

 at that time by the Hon. Erastus Corning, of Albany, a gen- 

 tleman who has always been prominent in national politics 

 who was a great friend of President Lincoln, and who in 

 his latter days has been a breeder of trotters, having had, 

 among others, the celebrated gelding George Palmer, the 

 stallion Harry Clay; and even now he has in the stud in 

 Kentucky a son of Harry Clay, called Shawmut, that has a 

 record of 2:26. I kept this position for a year, and at the 

 end of that time Mr. Mace told me he thought I had better 

 try to start out training horses myself. He said not to work 

 for anyone on a salary, but to branch out, and it would be 

 better to drive a 2:40 horse under my own management than 

 to drive the best trotter in the land and work on a salary 

 for any man. He argued that the first thing a man should 

 do was to make a name for himself. My subsequent expe- 

 rience convinced me that in this, as in many other things, 

 Mace was right. 



About this time I made the acquaintance of a character 



