Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-11-19

canny knowledge of the horses in training.
They can tell you in a breath just how i a..
this horse will go. how much weight he
likes what sort of track he prefers, the
kind of jockey he needs to ride him-tne
whole past performance works, in a nut
shell. The day of the woman who sticks
a pin in the program and plays the one
that the pin goes through is dead ana
gone. The women know the ponies now
adays.
The women are pretty sore. many OF
them, on account of the absence of com
missioners in the grand stand-the leerlns
fakirs and grafters who formerly took the
womens wagers in the grand stand. thar
is-but they easily coax and cajoie their
husbands or male escorts to take their bets
down to the betting ring for them Tne DIS,
banding of the price-cutting grand staho
Commissioners was about the hnest thHls
the Jockey Club. under whose jurisdiction
the Benning races are held, has done for
many years, but the men folks VINO nave
been compelled to carry the betting Wo-
mems money to and from the ring Since
that order was promulgated sometimes sig n
for the resumption of the old system, d.
that. -,
Most of the women are dollar betters.
The average man hates to hand DOCK
maker a dollar Not only that. but the
mere physical exertion of trapesing from
the grand stand to the betting ring, ana
of being battered and elbowed ana stepped
on and juggled with by the crazy crowd
upon arriving there isn't any small conslo-
Grafton A good many husbands have
"doped out a little scheme of their own
since the grand stand commissioners,
were done away with. They LAY against
their wives pick" that is to say. the
wife slips her husband her dollar. for ex-
ample, and mentions the name of the horse
she wants to play. The husband tells her
that he'll LAY her. the regular ring price.
This saves him the damaging trip TO the
betting ring.
But the women don't cotton to this
scheme very heartily. 1t makes 1t appear
too obvious that their husbands have no
confidence whatever in their picks" WIN
ming. And If their picks" do win, why
the money comes out of the family" and
not out of the satchel of one of those hor-
rid bookmakers-the average woman dearly
loves to administer any old kind of a
waHop, be 1t ever SO teenchy, to a book
maker. One husband that we know of
stopped employing this scheme early dur
ing the last Benning meeting. His wife
gave him dollar on her pick in the first
race, and he Laid against it to save him
self a trip to the betting ring. The horse
won al 10 to l and he had to slip her. the
money.
Then she gave him 50 on her pick" in
the second race, and as he figured that one
to have no chance on earth and was too
tired to go to the betting ring with the 81
bet of his spouse, he laid against" her 81
again. Her pick won again, at 10 to l..
After she had taken him in the next race
with $40 bet on a 3 to l shot that won
and that he Laid against he decided that
that little jaunt down to the betting ring
with his wife's bets wasn't going to be any
too irksome for him in the future.
1t is grievous to be compelled to state
that some of the married men dodge the en-
tire issue by deserving their wives during
the whole afternoon of racing.
They take their wives to the track, plump
them into seats away back in the upper
grand stand tiers, provide them with pro-
grams, tell 'em that they're just ''going
down to the board to get the scratches
and then forget to come back to where
their wives are until the numbers have been
hung out denoting the placed horses in the
last race of the day. Twenty-three Is
their watchword just as soon as they have
the wives of their bosoms safely deposited,
and when they return, after the final race,
they have some cock-and-bull story about
having been detained out in the paddock,
talking to a Teller / used to know years
ago." or something of that general sort.
Most of the well-known touts, foreign
and local, were there on the opening
day. The local tout belongs to the old
time, husky-voiced, somewhat beseech-
ing breed, and his number grows small
er and smaller each meeting, as the
lynx-eyed Pinke-tons employed around
the track become more watchful The
New York tout, however, belongs to the
new breed. He's a peripatetic fashion
plate, QlkeQ out IOr racing III every VI
ira detail, from hat-crown to shoe-caps.
To see the New York tout four-fushing
around the betting ring, with his field
glasses flung carelessly over his swag-
ger paddock coat, you'd easily imagine
him to be the millionaire owner of
swell bunch of stake horses, a turfman
of renown.
This breed of tout doesn't nail his
them around the hotels of evenings. He
looks the part" of one of the real
thing" turfmen, and the easy marks
who stroll around among the hotels. es-
Benning, naturally regard him one of
the sure-enough figures in the racing
game. They are flattered when they
make this sort of touts acquaintance,
them An Industrious tout of this char
acter can easily get soft mark" for
each horse in some race every day, so
that no matter which of the nags wins,
long shot or odds-on, the tout is there
for his bit"
"
OF course, there was the same old crowd
of lamenters ON the in-trip on the first day
as there Is on every racing day of the year.
wherever in the world there is race
track The losers were deeply, darkly sus-
piclous, as they always are.
II guess that wasn't a phony-lookin' ride
on D0dgSmeat, or nOlnln says one.
haven't seen Jockey today that wasn't
ridin' for the books" says another. And
thus on with the knocks. You can't tell
me that one was meant to win" 'Dtdn'
1 see the boy take forty wraps on him and
snatch him back to the ruck on the far
turn?' THAT one was runnin' FIR tn Swee-
ney book at tn end O. tn line" Never
seen such a bunch O. NUTS on a race
track" II don't mind droppin' tn bundle
but I want a run FIR it, bet a hat they
give that one pail o. water and a sleepin
powder before he went t tn post" If tn
starter didn't have ticket in his boot on
TIL one he let beat tn barrier by block,
I'll eat him." How're y goin' Z beat
'em when they're deliberately left standin
still at tn post?" II had that 30-to-1 shot
doped for a moral but played the 3-to-5
favorite, blast the luck!' MY horse won
by face on tn tape, but tn Judges give 1t
{ tn other one" Up and down the whole
gamut runs the lamenting of the bruised
ones and their hatred for the occasional
winner, whom they overhear recounting
his successes, is too deep for words.
But above all of the clamor of the lamen-
tations rises the rumbling diapason of the
returning Swear-Offs:
Hang 1t all, 1 thought I'd cut this
burned game out for good-never intended
to come out again as long as I lived-and
look at mel haven't copied one bet tday
out of the six / put DOWN. c. l.. c.