"I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair Grounds’ racing. He was no longer a seedy man. He was covered with gig lamps, and he had it in every pocket. Said I to him:
"’D’ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled off in Washington a few years ago? There was some quality in that old outlaw of yours that got the money.’
"’Outlaw be damned,’ said he. ’That horse was one of the cracks out of the West, on licensed tracks. He was a bit of paint. He had done a mile in 1:39-1/2 twice—round miles—and he was as game as a wild turkey egg. Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so, running him as a ringer all over the country. I was going to open my six-furlonger in Washington that time, but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack from Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1:14 was a common canter for him. The Willie Wises back in the East are not so many at that, are they?’"
_It Referred to Nothing Calculated to Disturb Domesticity, but It Came Near Wrecking a Happy Home._
When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm of patent attorneys reached the firm’s office in West Broadway on Monday morning last his eye caught sight of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the latter’s desk. As the junior partner was in Washington and wasn’t due back in New York until 4 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon, the senior partner opened the telegram. It was a night message from St. Louis, and it read as follows:
"Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don’t let anything scare you out. He’s easy. Bub."
The senior partner scratched his head over this.
"Conway—Jim Conway," he muttered to himself. "Now, who the dickens can Jim Conway be, I’d like to know? We’ve got no client named Jim Conway, and we’re not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr. Conway is the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this is."
The senior partner turned the message upside down and every which way, but the longer he looked at it from various points of view the more puzzled he became.
"Mighty belligerent sort of an affair, too," he mused. "Now, what has this Jim Conway done to my partner that he needs to be punched for it? And who’s this Bub? Bub! That’s a deuce of an undignified name for a man to put on paper. Great Scott! I wonder if my junior partner has gone in for prize fighting at that Jersey athletic club he belongs to? Perhaps he’s been matched to box some fellow member named Jim Conway, and this Bub chap down at St. Louis is wiring him encouragement. Nope, that can’t be right, either. My junior partner has been taking on fat at an alarming rate lately, so that he can’t be training for a boxing contest."
