PREFACE

MOST of the racing stories I have read had more to do
with showing how some otherwise uninteresting person,
who lived upon the precarious product of his cunning,
had performed a great coup in the betting, and often
by methods somewhat irregular, to say the least. The
merits of the great race-horses seem of secondary im-
portance.  The leading turfmen and legislators are
ignored to show the acuteness of some individual whose
only title to distinction is his recklessness with money he
never earned.
  Whoever expects to find this a volume of that de-
scription will be disappointed. Betting will be treated
as an incident of racing-not as its object. The great
races and the great race-horses, the leading owners,
trainers, and jockeys of the past forty years afford
ample material of general interest with which to fill a
volume without going into the details of their betting,
which is a personal matter and concerns them alone.
  The object of this volume is to record the career of
                       Evii]