Los Angeles herald., 1906-07-02

Hciently diaphanous to let in little occa.
slonal rays Of light during the time wher
the coins coming in and the world Is
swimming In rose. It's the old down
and-out story contrasted with the up.
and-tn thing that applies to all of us
| humans, but with a particular force to
Jockeys, for they get theirs quickly, and
they've got to have the toe weights and
the balance pads at an earlier stage of
ire than the rest of us IL they're to
sink or swim when their cleaning day
passes.
But the pity Of II is that most of the
rlding youngsters are bone heads and
they can never be made to see It when
the gilt tide is coming their way. Few
of them ever come out of the hoop-la
swirl with anything worth taking ac-
count of. Ysee, they can't be con-
Nersed with on that money hiding thing.
They get all sweled up early, and they
know 1t all, and then some.
once | sat alongside one of this kind
"a sure-enough premier Jockey Of his
tlme-on parlor car going down to a
New York track. He had ridden lot
or horses for me, and I'd known him
since his apprenticeship days. He was
living then at daily rate that young
Astor who's recently Joined the guards,
y Know. probably never equaled in his
life. He was so small his own weight
wouldn't have balanced his winnings
for a meeting. Said 1 to this bone
conk Jockey as | sat alongside of him
in the parlor car:
You've got few pennies tucked
away underneath the oilcloth on the top
shelf of the cupboard, haven't your
oh, I'm worth about two hundred
thousand, he replied, swelling out his
chest till it was fully twenty-four
inches in circumference.
oh, y'are, hey?' said /. Well. that,
a pretty cunnin' stack of blues. amt
it? Now, how long do you expect to go
on riding and winning?'
" oh, till Bill Daly's elected mayor of
New York trepied the prosperous
whiffet impatiently. Let's spiel about
something else
'Uh-huh, said l, wen talk about
something else, but just hold on
minute, son. Let me slip you
cne of those wise kind. What
you want to do is to get up in time for
an early breakfast tomorrow morning
ard then, after your cantaloupe and
ST anish mackerel and coffee and such
like, you want to hike right downtown
to some trust company or other and tie
about say $150,000 of that little bundle
of the blue checks in what we call an
annuity. Soak it away so hard and
tight that you'll never be able to loosen
1t with machine gun. That's what
you want to do. Go it?'
What did he do? He staked me to
long yawn.
We'll, it was only last year that
happened to be passing in front of the
nookies' line at Gravesend when I saw
this same little man sinking up to one
of the well known LAYERS
Hey, said the busted midget to the
bookie, with forced rakishness. gimme
a marker on that top horse there for a
five spot. will you?-I'm going to run it
irto a roll
And then / fell into a little dream
of the old days when that same hoy
had sat astride the greatest horses in
America-had bestridden them like a
veritable devil of sheer ability, and out
of pure boysh impishness had fetched
them home in such tight finishes that
folk in the grandstand would turn the
color of chalk for fear he was going
to lose, although there never was a
chance of his losing in tight finish
And there he was asking a sardonic,
gum-chewing layer for a s. marker on
a plug.
Downfall of Upstart
Il know another one-he was a wiz
of all the wizards in the saddle in his
day-who did put something away-a
chunk, in fact, which he invested in
Brooklyn real estate. Wise and digni-
fled old men, owners of thoroughbreds
and millionaires on the side, had to
grovel before this one when he was rid
Ing free lance to take the mount on
their horses. The cush poured in on
him like Bay of Biscay tide, the right
kind of Wall street tips nudged his
way, so that when the weight thing
got i'm he had the chunk. as | say,
spraddled around in good Brooklyn
property.
But it faded. He began to play 'em
from the ground. Playing 'em when
you're a great and successful Jockey,
able to get back at the fellows who
slip you dead ones. and thus get you
in wrong. and playing 'em when you're
just one of the push that think they're
in possession of real sweet things, are
two dead different matters, and this
Jockey boy that had been found it out
to the tune of absolute bustedness in
side of two years. He never had a
chance as player. He never lined up.
And he's going around the tracks to-
day. too, like the one 1 met in Los An
geles, moving alongside the people he
used to know, and whispering to 'em
to please slip him a note, for he has a
good thing, y'see.
Remember Patsy? There weren't
many finer natural horse riders in this
or any other country in his day than
that same Patsy. The old folk will cas-
lily remember the day, seven or eight
years ago, when he pulled five out of
six mounts first past the wire and got
his sixth mount into the place There
just wasn't anything on earth that that
race-rding kid couldn't have had. and
kept If he'd have remained straight.
But John Barleycorn claimed him for
a prize package when he was at the
age when most boys are playing shinny
in the vacant lot after school hours and
the coin slipped through his digits like
soup through a strainer.
Incredible as 1t may sound | saw him
blow $1,000 on champagne at an all
night session in the cafe of New York
hotel on one ocasion. He Just ordered
the wealthy water to be brought up in
basketfuls for all hands that tripped
into the place and the word got around
among the cheerful ones, and when
Patsy got out of the Turkish bath $1,000
was the perfectly right bill that was
handed out to him by the hotel cafe
people. He got married to a fine little
wife, and she tried to restrain him,
and did for n hrief while hv roaLyi,,or