;
His masters kneel with lifted hands
To this base thing and bold.

Lead him away!--far down the past,
Where sentiment has fled;
But, gentlemen, just at the last,
Drink deep!--_the thoroughbred_!

CONTENTS

I Blister
II Two Ringers
III Wanted--a Rainbow
IV Salvation
V A Tip in Time
VI Tres Jolie
VII Ole Man Sanford
VIII Class
IX Exit Butsy
X The Big Train

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Micky's standin' in the track leanin' against
Hamilton" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"Tres Jolie!" he shrieked.

"I see the Elefant stamp him."

BLISTER JONES

BLISTER

How my old-young friend "Blister" Jones acquired his remarkable
nickname, I learned one cloudless morning late in June.

Our chairs were tipped against number 84 in the curving line of
box-stalls at Latonia. Down the sweep of whitewashed stalls the upper
doors were yawning wide, and from many of these openings, velvet black
in the sunlight, sleek snaky heads protruded.

My head rested in the center of the lower door of 84. From time to
time a warm moist breath, accompanied by a gigantic sigh, would play
against the back of my neck; or my hat would be pushed a bit farther
over my eyes by a wrinkling muzzle--for Tambourine, gazing out into the
green of the center-field, felt a vague longing and wished to tell me
about it.

The track, a broad tawny ribbon with a lace-work edging of white fence,
was before us; the "upper-turn" with its striped five-eighths pole, not
fifty feet away. Some men came and set up the starting device at this
red and white pole, and I asked Blister to explain to me just what it
meant.

"Goin' to school two-year-olds at the barrier," he explained. And
presently--mincing, sidling, making futile leaps to get away, the boys
on their backs standing clear above them in the short stirrups--a band
of deer-like young thoroughbreds assembled, thirty feet or so from the
barrier.

Then there was trouble. Those sweet young things performed, with the
rapidity of thought, every lawless act known to the equine brain. They
reared. They plunged. They bucked. They spun. They surged together.
They scattered like startled quail. I heard squeals, and saw vicious
shiny hoofs lash out in every direction; and the dust spun a yellow
haze over it all.

"Those jockeys will be killed!" I gasped.

"Jockeys!" exclaimed Blister contemptuously. "Them ain't
jockeys--they