Cinder Path Tales

36 CINDER-PATH TALES confessions, andI shall avoid the "strutting I " as much as possible. After my defeat of " Chipper " Simmons, at Hacking's Brighton track, there were a couple ofyears passed not at all to my liking, though profitably enough for one of small ideas. I took on matches wherever they promised a dollar. I ran everybody, and every distance, from a fifty-yard dash to a mile run, andalmost invariably won, largely because ofthe pains I tookwith myself, and my careful training. I learned all the tricks of the trade,gave closefinishes always,did an ar­ tistic"fainting act," and made myself a subject of regretful, not to say painful, remembrance to a largepart of the sporting fraternity. They stood it all right for a couple of years, but the summer before I met MacLeod I suddenly discovered I had about squeezed the orange dry. They had, very naturally, grown more and more shy of me, until it had become impossible to obtain a match, except under prohibitive conditions. I tried giving good men eight yards in the " hun­ dred " and one hundred yards in the mile for a while, but discovered it was a hard business, withnothing in it. My only profit, as far as I could see, was to run crooked, and fake a race or two, but at this, though not over-nice, I drew the line.