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WASHINGTONIANS LOVE RACING. "There is an interest in the racing at Ben-nings all over the city of Washington which is entirely characteristic of the southern country, and also has some expression in Chicago around Derby time. There is neither a day nor a season in New York when around the city itself there are any visible evidences that a race meeting is In progress. Unless you read the papers or talked with a sportsman friend you would never know that racing was going on in the metropolis. "Down here in Washington the whole town announces the presence of the thoroughbreds to you at the every step of the way from the railroad station to your hotel. All the leading shops have decorated their stores with saddles, bridles, blankets, crops and all sorts of racing paraphernalia. Racing colors abound in the show windows. Horseshoes are hung everywhere from the barber shop to the billiard room. The hotel lobbies show all sorts of significant devices to suggest to you the fact that the racehorse has come to town," says a Washington letter to Morning Telegraph. "It is the outward show of the sort of general enthusiasm that prevails over the entertainment of the Washington Jockey Club. Racing becomes in Washington a sort of civic affair and a matter for local pride. "On the Sunday morning preceding the opening of the meeting, there were some 2,000 or 3,000 people at the racecourse watching the gallops of the horses. The scene at the track in the early morning was much like that you may find at Louisville just before the Kentucky Derby is to be run, or at Memphis preceding the galloping in the Montgomery Handicap, or at old Lexington before a race meeting was to open, or at Nasville on the Sunday coming ahead of the races. "In fact, anywhere in the south where a meeting is to be held the townsfolk take a healthy pleasure in going out to the racecourse when it is in undress, so to speak, and in familiarizing themselves with the horses long before the race programs are printed. "It is so entirely different from that aspect which surrounds the racing at New York. Its significance is, simply that the people enjoy the sport because they like horses and understand them, and the sport is in a way native to them. Sometimes you may find that at Chicago just before the running of an American Derby. At no other time, though, do the Chicago people ever go near the racecourse in the forenoon. "These Washingtonians, however, are bred to the racecourse or to any other institution which fosters the breeding of a good-looking and well-mannered horse. It would seem a thing to regret that something of the same spirit of affection for the animal that does the racing might not be created In the hearts of those 30,000 who go down handicap day to the racecourses of Long Island and cheer themselves hoarse over the performance of a horse that they never saw before, and which a majority of them will never see again. They applaud a name, not a peson-ality. "Down here they know every selling plater as soon as he comes out on the track, and they will tell you how he is bred and who owns him before the colors go up on him. They have a paddock knowledge of horses and recognize them as familiars when they do their parade before the race."
