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GOSSIP OF THE TURF. W. C. Whitney paid a visit to the Aqueduct track Tuesday and accompanied starter Mars Cassidy to the post in the latters carriage for the second race. Mr. Whitney expressed himself as being highly pleased with the system of starting that Mr. Cassidy has introduced at the Queens County track, and said that it would have to be adopted at all of the metropolitan courses in due time. Mr. Whitney, incidentally, secured the use of one of the gates used by Mr. Cassidy and will school his horses to it this winter at Aiken, S. C. Mr. Whitney, during the afternoon, announced that all of his horses in England will be sold at auction the first week in December, including the two-year-old Hands Around, by Meddler Handspun, which ran third in the Middle Park Plate this year and is eligible for the Derby. An amusing incident is reported from Paris as having occurred at a race meeting at Auteuil. An Englishman, whose French must have been that of the English schools, went to the Paris Mutuel booth and asked for 900 francs worth of tickets on Popillon Quatre. His pronunciation, however, was not sufficiently understood by the clerk in charge to enable him to carry out the wishes of his client. He understood that the individual wanted to back the horse whose name was number four on the list, as he could make out a i-esemblance between the word Quatre, meaning four, as the Englishman pronounced it, and the sound he in common with other Parisians gave it. Acting, therefore, in accordance with the idea he. supposed had been conveyed to him, the clerk gave the Englishman ninety ten-franc tickets on Geanne la Folle, smiling as he did so, for Geanne, although fourth on the list, was perhaps the rankest outsider that had been entered. But with the luck that often causes a man to stumble on something which he would never see were his eyes not blinded at the time, it happened that the error was the cause of great good fortune to the badly pronouncing Englishman. La Folle actually won, and the Englishman discovered when looking at his tickets that he had won 61,400 francs.
