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RACING FAVORED IN TEXAS. One more week at Houston and the racing on the Texas tracks will come to an end. unless William .Murrays proposed . meeting at 131 Paso is realized. That this was the banner year of Texas racing is evident from the splendid meetings held at Dallas. Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio. The success of these meetings may in part be attributed to the unsettled condition of the turf in other states. That the future of racing in Texas, has a bright outlook no one doubts, but that the undesirable element that has caused so much trouble to the sport in other states must not be tolerated by Texans Is expedient and necessary for that future. The large attendance at the different meetings throughout the state testify to the jiopularity of racing with the Texas people. The large volume of business conducted in the betting rings is conclusive evidence that the people appreciate that their state does not deny them the right to speculate when so inclined, for the Lone Star State is one of the few which does not attempt to deny to its citizens the right to speculate upon a contest of speed under proper safeguards and precautions. The sentiment of the people could not have been better expressed than it was by Judge Harper, the leading jurist of the southwest, in an anecdote related at a smoker tendered the visiting horsemen by the Chamber of Commerce at El Paso. After extolling the laws of the stnte which make betting legal, and thanking God that he was permitted to dwell in such a community, the judge said: "When the question of the right and wrong of speculation on speed contests arises, I am always reminded of an incident which occurred in the early days in Kentucky. A prominent and lieloved citizen had died and it was impossible to secure the local clergyman to otliciate at the funeral services, as lie was absent from his parish at the time. In his absence one of the leading men of the city acted. His remarks, brief and to the point, were as follows: " "Fellow citizens, I anr not a public speaker and cannot do justice to the duty assigned me. but I will say that Colonel Brown owned good cocks and he fought them: he had good whiskey and he drank it: and, best of all, he had good horses and he ran them. " That is the spirit that prevails through Texas today. Would that New York. Illinois and other states had more of the same sentiment.
