When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

by C. A. Stephens

But the slow race and scrub race were the features that interested us most. In explanation I may say that a "slow race" is not an uncommon attraction at a county fair. Usually the object in racing horses is to exhibit speed; but the "slow race" is for the slowest horse—the one which is longest in hobbling a mile. To prevent cheating, no one is allowed to drive his own horse; if he enters for the race he must drive a horse that has been entered by another person. Of course, under such conditions each man drives over the track as quickly as he can, since it is for his interest to do so. The "purse," or prize, at the Fair that fall was ten dollars; that is to say, the man who entered the slowest old skeleton of a horse, received ten dollars, together with the cheers and jeers of the crowd. Public sentiment is now more humane and wholesome.

What Thomas and I had in view was the ten dollars; and we did not believe there was a horse in the county that could beat our old "Ponkus" at going slow.

There were no restrictions in the race. Anybody who had a horse was at liberty to enter him for it. The time set for the race was four o'clock in the afternoon. A little before that hour, Thomas drove Ponkus on to the track, in an old "thoroughbrace" wagon.

We found that as many as twelve different horses (or wrecks of horses) had been entered for the race. It was an odd and venerable-looking troop that drew up near the judge's stand, which was to be the starting point.

There was one horse with the "spring halt" in both hind legs, and he lifted his feet nearly a yard high at every step. There was another with three "spavins" and a "ring-bone" on the remaining leg. Still another had the "heaves" so badly that its breathing could be heard twenty rods away. In fact, every one had some ailment or defect. The agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had not yet made their way into our locality.

The owners surveyed the rival nags with a critical eye. The bystanders laughed and made bets. The horse with the "spring halt," that lifted both hind legs so high, was the popular favorite at first. But soon a fresh roar from the crowd told of the approach of another "racer."

A tin-peddler, with his cart and great bags of paper-rags on top, came in. The first glimpse of the peddler's horse sent dismay to the rest of us. Besides being utterly stiff-kneed and knock-kneed, it was really nothing but a moving skeleton. Its hair looked as dead as that on a South American cow-hide, and nearly every bone in its frame might have been counted.

The crowd shouted, "Room! Room there! Room for old Rack-o'-bones! Don't breathe or he'll tumble down! Is he balky? Will he kick? Check him up!"

The peddler had been passing the Fair Grounds on his way through the county, when some wag had hailed him and induced him to enter his horse for the race. He was a little wiry man forty or fifty years old, dressed in a soiled tweed coat and a boy's cloth cap.

He wanted to drive his horse, harnessed as it was in the tin-cart; but the rest of us cried out against it; he therefore took the cart off the forward wheels, and strapped a salt-box to the axle, to sit on. It was a queer sort of "sulky." There was not much to choose, however; all the horses were in rickety wagons, or battered gigs.