E-text prepared by Sarah Sammis, Chuck Greif, KarenD,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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My Dear "Purdue" McCormick:—
It is customary to dedicate a book, the author selecting a goodnatured person to stand sponsor for his work. There are 100,000,000people in this country, and I have selected you as Old Man Curry'sgodfather. When you reflect upon this statistical statement, the sizeof the compliment should impress you.
Then too, you love a good horse—I have often heard you say so. Youlove a good horse in spite of the fact that you once harnessedColonel Jack Chinn's thoroughbred saddle animal to a trap, thesubsequent events producing a better story than any you will find inthese pages. Nevertheless, my dear sir, they are respectfully, evenfirmly dedicated to you.
To E. O. McCormick,
San Francisco, Cal.
It is one of life's tragedies that as we go along we realize thechanges that come upon almost everything with which we used to beassociated. And this is noticeable not only in ordinary affairs,whether it be in business or in the home, but it obtrudes itself uponthe sports or pastimes which we most affected in the days when someof us had more time or a greater predilection to indulge in them.
We so often go back to an old stamping ground expecting to find oldfriends or to meet the characters which to a great extent added tothe charm of local coloring, and nothing disappoints us more than tofind that they have all either gone the way of the earth or changedtheir manner of living and habitat.
I think this is brought more forcibly to mind when we view the turfactivities of an earlier generation as compared with those moremodern, because nowadays the game is played differently all aroundand doesn't look the same from the viewpoint of one who loved thespectacular[Pg viii] and quaint figures that so distinguished what we mightcall the Victorian Era of American racing.
The sport of emperors has to a great extent become the pastime ofKing Moneybags. And there is no place for ancient crusaders like OldMan Curry, so he has taken the remnants of his stable and gone backto the farm or merged into the humdrum and neutral tinted landscapewhich always designates the conventional and ordinary.
He doesn't fit in any more.