view raw text
IGNORANT OF CHARACTER OF TURFMEN. Anti-Racing Crusaders Cherish Strange Ideas of Conduct of the Sport. New York. March 10. — You no doubt recall the case of the life-long race-goer, Stanley French, a resident of Sheepshead Bay, who found a pocket iMM.k containing nearly 0,000 one day last fall en route from Belmont lark to Sheepshead Bay, and returned it to its rightful owner, Henry McDaniel. A somewhat similar case has just come to the surface. Canon Chase, a Brooklyn divine, had attended the race-track argument at Albany on Wednesday, missed the regular train, and was invited to come down to New York on the Jockey Club special, which ■rap tilled with horsemen and newspaper men. Arrived at the end of the trip, Canou Chase put on his overcoat and had left the Grand Central depot when he missed his pocketbook. Hardly had he realized his less when John J. Hylaud, who trained for August Belmont for eight years, overtook the divine and handed him the missing pocketliook. which he had pieked up in the car. . This is an absolute fact, and as such was duly printed in one newspaiwr the morning after the transaction.- Now cones a belated account of the story in a paper which is doing all it can tq hurt racing, and the whole transaction is made tanajipear a put-up job on the part of the race track men. the implication being thai tie- pocketbook was abstracted and then returned to its owner as an object lesson that racing men were not necessarily thieves, as so many al legal divines keep on declaring, oh, how broad minded is the average "foe to gambling." It is a fact that many of these opponents of the turf are under the impression that the "wheel" which is in common use today at many of the county fairs throughout the laud, is the chief implement for •gambling" at the race tracks, and I that this accounts for much of their virulence. And I yet it is this ignorant class that has many of our • legislators in deadly fear that they will be beaten at the next election unless they vote for Governor . Hughes anti-racing bill, which in the mind of that once popular executive is now becoming a mono mania. And uecr a word does he say against the insidious methods of speculation in Wall street, where a man can in one day lose his patrimony and 1 the world at large be no wiser until exposure comes wlnn he is a fugitive from justice, having stolen i somebody elses money. • . Veteran Jacob Piucus, who rode horses fifty years 3 ago, will take out a trainers license and handle a , couple of two year olds bred by the late A. J. "as-salt. If Ihe friends of the turf wanted an excel leut walking ad erlisement to show the "autis" as s to the good result of a long life Beaat in the open I air. Pincus would have been a capital subject. His ruddy complexion and generally rugged appearance are living evidence of a well-spent life. You know-he trained Iroquois when that Leamington colt won the Derby of 1SS1, supplementing it with the St. Leger. Pincus liked England so well after this that he took up his residence there almost continuously, though he came to America several times, and in the winter of 1S93, he, "Matt" Byrnes, "Pittsburg Phil* and myself were four New Yorkers who went to the races at the lialf-mlle track at Hot Springs, where Byrnes was official timer, Pincus associate judge, and I was presiding judge at one of the most remarkable six-weeks racing ventures that fate ever called U|H n me to take part in. Colonel Hatch was starter. With John J. Ryan, Hugh McCarren and Charley McCatTerty all racing horses at that meeting, and all three ready to fight at the "drop of a hat," the wonderful thing was that the meeting should have lasted so long. It was there that the regrettable news reached me from James Howard that Johu E. Brewster, secretary of Washington Park, was dead. It marked the end of my five years close companionship with one of the best fellows that ever lived, and I cannot pen these lines without reflecting with deep satisfaction on the words of that other popular man who, alas, has also joined the majority, George Henry Wheeler, who, at the close of the season , of 1.S94, said to all of us racing officials at Washington Park: "This has been the cleanest and most satisfactory meeting we have ever had here." Too , bad that so high-class a track as Washington Park should now be merely a memory. J. J. Burke.
