E-text prepared by Sarah Sammis, Chuck Greif, KarenD, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) OLD MAN CURRY Race Track Stories by CHARLES E. VAN LOAN * * * * * THE BOOKS OF CHARLES E. VAN LOAN _Memorial Edition_ OLD MAN CURRY STORIES OF THE RACE TRACK WITH INTRODUCTION BY L. B. YATES * * * * * OLD MAN CURRY Race Track Stories by CHARLES E. VAN LOAN Introduction by L. B. Yates New York George H. Doran Company MCMXIX Copyright, 1917, by George H. Doran Company Copyright, 1915-6, by P. F. Collier & Son, Incorporated Printed in the United States of America My Dear "Purdue" McCormick:-- It is customary to dedicate a book, the author selecting a good natured person to stand sponsor for his work. There are 100,000,000 people in this country, and I have selected you as Old Man Curry's godfather. When you reflect upon this statistical statement, the size of the compliment should impress you. Then too, you love a good horse--I have often heard you say so. You love a good horse in spite of the fact that you once harnessed Colonel Jack Chinn's thoroughbred saddle animal to a trap, the subsequent events producing a better story than any you will find in these pages. Nevertheless, my dear sir, they are respectfully, even firmly dedicated to you. Yours very sincerely, CHARLES E. VAN LOAN To E. O. McCormick, San Francisco, Cal. INTRODUCTION BY L. B. YATES It is one of life's tragedies that as we go along we realize the changes that come upon almost everything with which we used to be associated. And this is noticeable not only in ordinary affairs, whether it be in business or in the home, but it obtrudes itself upon the sports or pastimes which we most affected in the days when some of 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 old friends or to meet the characters which to a great extent added to the charm of local coloring, and nothing disappoints us more than to find that they have all either gone the way of the earth or changed their manner of living and habitat. I think this is brought more forcibly to mind when we view the turf activities of an earlier generation as compared with those more modern, because nowadays the game is played differently all around and doesn't look the same from the viewpoint of one who loved the spectacular and quaint figures that so distinguished what we might call the Victorian Era of American racing. The sport of emperors has to a great extent become the pastime of King Moneybags. And there is no place for ancient crusaders like Old Man Curry, so he has taken the remnants of his stable and gone back to the farm or merged into the humdrum and neutral tinted landscape which always designates the conventional and ordinary.