The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1913-01-10
THE LATE JAMES R. KEENE
Continued from Page 81

beginning with Spendthrift, back in
1879. and including the greatest of all
horses, Sysonloy, as well as Voter, Bal
lot Celt, Colin, Hornpipe, SUperman,
Conroy, and the greatest of all two
year oIdS. Domino made a better rec
ord than their owner and his longer
list of stock manipuFadiOnS.
When Ballot won the Suburban han
c1icap of 1885, in 2503, breaking the rec
ord for the track and the event, the
owner Of the race horse said to- those
near enough to shake his hand. or slap
his back: TT is too bad that Gov
Hughes was not here to see that race.
trace of emotion James r. Keene
was thinking of the Hughes anti-bet-
ting Ieeisla ton. He was also showing
some emotion, which he had not done
in f4ae face of defeats and victories of
three decades in Wall Street
He threw his arm around the mag
lli5cent horses neck and patted the
steanins- TANKS. grooming to it is
woman does to a child, Oblivious of
group in the forefront of which stood
Patrick Henry McCarren and Harry
PAYNE Whitney. And when Whitney
said: I congratulate you, M. Keene,'
the Wall Street Spectator took the
proffered hand and replied, I thank
you sir apparently forgetful, in the
low of the moment, of the feud be-
rWeerf himself and the other mans
father William c. Whitney, developed
out of the famous tobacco deals of
ten years before
But that was James R. Keene the
tuEfHaH not the rs. man aeo ADDED Cd
Hooking Coal and Iron to a long list
of deals in which he had participated
The Hooking Coal collapse was the
cause of the last Wall Street cOmTno-
ton in which he figured chief OPP
orator.
His Fondness For Racing.
At the race tracks of America. Eng
land, and France. at his stables at
Sheepshead- Bay, at his great stock.
farm in Kentucky, keezle faEat1seaH the
lively enthusiasts Of a boyzs "A good
horse was the thing that he liked sec
ond best IN 1ife.- First in his affections
was his son, FsoxfEalI, for whom he
named the great horse that won the
Grand Prix de Paris and three big
classic events of England for him IN
1880 the first year that he sent. his
racers 10 the. foreign tracks
Third in his list of affections was
gambling of the stock market, and
fourth sEvas the mixture of black -COf-'
fee and brandy upon which he made
his lonely breakfast, with the aid of
z single roll at his Office In Broad st
He lived alone at the Waldorf-AstOr1a,
but preferred to go down town before
breakfast, probably because he al
If the manipulation had any. other
likes, the world knew nothing about
them and the world will never he the
wiser for what he told. No more Sc
cretive man ever scanned ticker tape,
in that region of whispers and secrets.
An imports nt piece of furniture in. his
brazier One of the daily rites of the
man was to put into that urn every
night before going uptown, most of
his CORES pond ence of the day. and set
q ma ch to it. That was a task that
the Office boy was never called upon
to Perform
50 Keene was a two-sided man up to
his old age @'At the track an ac-
1uaintance once said of him. The is
no gam bier; his betting on his own
wonderful horses is almost nil He is
nd a
erica ever produced. The white with
1Iue dots of his racing stable stands
Tor everything that is the best IN
aorsefesh and in methods. But in
Wall Street he is James r. Keene
When he came to New York from
AXE Jay COuId's scalp Keene start
I'd out to be a many-sided citizen He
7ought himself a villa at Newport and
4 box at the opera and a lot Of paint
ngs He retained the willing and
ssger Sam Ward, who was much more
# a success as a society man. than
IS fna meier, to coach him in the
little niceties of dinners and balls and
receptions But ne was bored by the
opera. and sold shis box after nodding
through two or three performances
IF If. His villa at Newport burned
within a year, and he thought 50 little
af the summer ca itaI of fashion
fhat he never rebuilt the house and
never went back
Painting Which Came Back.
Then. when he had his first financial
failure in New York, the paintings
we're sacrificed in the general wreck
of his fortune, and the best of them,
a Rosa Bonheur-not the Horse Fair
was promptly tJFned over to Jay
Gould by the anti Keene broker who
had got il in the settlement. Gould
hung that painting in the most con-
spiclous place in his home at Fifth
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