"I don’t often pay any attention to good things," continued the turfman, "and it’s rarer still that I am compelled to regret my indifference to the bottled-up cinches, but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I overlooked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me several minutes’ hard thinking. I didn’t lose any money over it, but it’s hard to think of the inside chance I neglected on that occasion to make an old-fashioned hog killing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out at Lakeside and was pulling a purse down with ’em once in a while, and depending on the purses to keep me even with the game and strong for hay money. I wasn’t doing any betting; I took my confirmed indifference to good things along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back at the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, for if there’s any place in the country outside of the outlaw tracks where good things do have a habit of going through right often, then that place is Chicago. I didn’t profit by any of ’em that were made to stick last fall, however, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 20 to 1 to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping with all the money. A lot of men I knew out at Lakeside—fellows with small strings, none of which ever won or got in the money—were on all kinds of velvet by giving ear to the inside good things, but they didn’t make me jealous a little bit. I’m in the game for keeps, and that’s more than can be said for the good-thing players.
"Anyhow, for all that, I’m still regretting that I overlooked this chance I’m speaking of. I was in a Dearborn street hang-out for racing men one night, along toward the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy came inside and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. I went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for me. He was employed as a general stable roustabout by the owner of a California string, and I had befriended the man in the paddock a few days before when he was engaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was getting the worst of the scrap when I stepped in and pulled his antagonist off of him. It didn’t amount to anything, this, but the tank stable hand that was waiting for me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain seemed to feel grateful to me for it.