Right across the river from me lives JIM TICK-EATER. Now suppose a foreign fleet should come up there. We can’t ask those Turtles and Water Moccasins to move out without Government sanction. If they haven’t got enough water in there to fill the harbor (we are only 18 miles from NOWATER, Oklahoma), why, we will have to ask all the Neighbors to drain their Corn Liquor from their stills in there for a couple of days. Then we could float the Leviathan.
Of course I don’t get anything done for my Harbor because my River really exists.
Now, Folks, why patronise California-made Productions? The Capitol Comedy Co. of Washington, D. C., have never had a failure. They are every one, 100 percent funny, or 100 percent Sad.
They are making some changes in their cast down there and later I will tell you about that. Also something about the Director.
So long, Folks, I will meet you at the Naval Manœuvers on CONTENTNEA CREEK next year.
A SKINNY DAKOTA KID WHO MADE GOOD
A SKINNY DAKOTA KID WHO MADE GOOD
Out of the west came a little skinny runt kid, born out in the hills of South Dakota. On Sundays the Cowpunchers and Ranchers would meet and have Cow Pony races. On account of his being small he was lifted up and a surcingle was strapped around over his legs and around the horse. He was taken to the starting line on a straightaway and was “lapped and tapped” off. He had the nerve and he seemed to have the head. So they cut the surcingle and he got so he could sit up there on one of those postage stamp things they call a Jockey’s saddle. He kept riding around these little Country Shooting Gallery meets, and Merry-Go-Round Gatherings, until he finally got good enough to go to a real race track at New Orleans. There he saw more Horses in one race than he had ever seen at one track before.
His first race he ran 2nd. Then he said to himself, “Why run second? Why not run first?” And he did. They began to notice that this kid really savied a Horse. He spoke their language. Horses seemed to know when the kid was up. He carried a Bat (Jockey’s term for a whip) but he never seemed to use it. Other Jocks would come down the stretch whipping a Horse out when the best he could finish would be 4th or 5th. But not this kid. When he couldn’t get in the money he never punished them. He hand rode them. He could get more out of a Horse with his hands than another Jock could get with the old Battery up both sleeves.
He got to be recognized as one of the best, and he passed from one Stable to another until he landed with the biggest, a real Trainer and a Real Sportsman-Owner. How many thousands of People in every line come to New York every year that want to make good, get ahead and be recognized! They come by the millions. How many, if anything happened to them, would get even a passing Notice in the busy and overcrowded New York Press. If some Millionaire died, the best he could get would be a column. Then perhaps it wouldn’t be read through by a dozen. But what blazoned across the front pages of every Metropolitan daily a few days ago, in bigger headlines than a Presidential Nomination, bigger than the Prince of Wales will get on his arrival? In a race at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., a Horse had fallen and carried down with him a little skinny Kid (that had slept in his youth not in a 5th Avenue Mansion but in Box Stalls all over the Country with Horses, the Horses he knew how to ride and the Horses that loved to run their best for him).