Between races, we visit the paddock, insinuating our way through the crowd in order to get near the ring where the horses show their paces to the racegoers who make believe they are judges of speed, condition and stamina. As a matter of fact, the horses are all very much alike—wiry, wispy things like lean greyhounds with rippling veins that stand out in relief, muscles of rawhide, and bell nostrils. There is little difference in their speed either—a second, two seconds, or mayhap three—but these seconds are, in their results, so vastly different to the turfmen that all other contrarieties become as nothing. The jockeys who know the horses from their hoofs up, and who ride with instinct, are perhaps the only men who can fairly hazard what the results will be—or should be.
They tell me that most of these jockeys die of consumption. This is probably owing to the fact that they must rigidly train the flesh off their bones. Napoleon said that Providence always favoured the heaviest battalions. The dictum has no application to jockeys. Our Western maxim that a cowboy is only as good as his nerves would be of more general applicability.
But while, in the horses themselves, there seems to be little of marked individuality, think of what volumes could be written on their names. Here we have Ringmaster, Gun Cotton, Froglegs, Song of the Rocks, Tankard, Scarlet Pimpernel, Porcupine, Pons Asinorum and other names which hold a lure. So exactly co-natural are they to our extended acquaintanceship among the humans back in the Province of Alberta, that our homesickness vanishes into the sunny blue.
There were nine horses in the autumn steeplechase and Young Morpheus would have beat handily had he not fallen on the last jump. The jockey rocketed over his head and lay still, but Young Morpheus, being a thoroughbred and no welcher, ran on and came slashing in to the finish. That horse has a soul like John's and mine, only better than John's. The prize was carried off by Highbridge, who seemed to be the favourite, for the enclosure turned itself into a pandemonium. Men and woman who before were separate entities, became merged into a mass of frantic arms and white faces that with a pleading voice coaxed the winner down the homestretch to victory. It is the steeplechase that probes to the depths mankind's capacity for physical enjoyment.
"But the jockey was thrown," you say, "and lay still?" Think you we wear the willow because of it? Not so, Honourable Gentleman. We are consoled by the well-turned and doubtless truthful reflection that—
"Bright Lucifer into darkness hurled,
Was happier than angels quiet-eyed."
I did not see any more of the races because I was summoned to the Government House box and invited to tea with the occupants thereof. They must have heard what an excellent dairywoman I am, and things like that, but how they heard I cannot surmise unless John has been telling.
"I'd like to live in your Province," said the Governor, "living is mercilessly high there, but money keeps moving; money keeps moving, and a fellow like me need never go to work without his breakfast."
In the Directors' room, we refreshed ourselves with little sweet cakes and tea from a delicious brew. And in this room, I talked with the handsome, well-mannered women from Kentucky, Virginia, and Hamilton who have brought thither their horses—about six hundred in all—for this autumn meet.
I have made up my mind that John shall not argue me into going home, not if I have to fall ill from discomposure of spirit, and, as for Toronto, ever hereafter it shall be to me a new city of Beucephala in honour of its horses and because of the immutable game-loving disposition of its people.