Читать книгу My Adventures with Your Money - George Graham Rice - Страница 10

The Hog-Killing of the Year

Will Come Off at Sheepshead Bay

On Saturday, at 4 O'clock.

Be Sure to Have a Bet Down.

Telegraph Us $5 for the

Information

One of our constant patrons resided in Louisville. He was among the first to whom we telegraphed the information on Saturday morning. The race was run and the horse lost.

About 4:30 P.M. we received a dispatch from our Louisville customer, reading as follows: "The hog-killing came off on schedule time—here in Louisville. I was the hog."

Another message from a pool-room habitué reached us, reading: "Good game. Have sent for more money."

We were often in receipt of messages of similar character on occasions when our selections failed to win and our customers lost their money; but these communications were generally in good spirit.

On one occasion we had what we believed to be first-hand information regarding a horse which was being prepared for a big betting coup by Dave Gideon, one of the cleverest horsemen in the country. Following our customary method of using vividly glowing advertisements, with the blackest and heaviest gothic type in the print shop, we announced:

A GIGANTIC HOG-KILLING

We have Inside Information of a Long

Shot that Should Win To-morrow at

10 to 1 and Put Half of the Bookmakers

out of Business.

Be Sure to Have a Bet Down on

This One. Terms $5.

The argument of the advertisement, which appeared beneath these display lines, was couched in the most glowing terms, and made it very plain that our information came from a secret source, and, further, that we had spent legitimately a snug sum of money to secure the information. We also pointed out that the owner was one of the shrewdest betting men on the turf and seldom went astray when he put down a "plunge" bet on one of his own entries.

Next day the race was run. The horse did not finish "in the money."

The following day we received many letters, as we always did when one of our heavily advertised "good things" lost. One of the most unique of these epistles contained a remonstrance from a Philadelphia subscriber. He wrote in this vein:

Dear Sir:—You have been advertising for some days that you would have a gigantic hog-killing to-day. I was tempted by your advertising bait and fell—and fell heavily with my entire bank roll. My bucolic training should have warned me that "hog-killings" are not customary in the early Spring, but I fell anyway.

Permit me to state, having recovered my composure, that Armour or Swift need have no fear of you as a competitor in the pork-sticking line, for far from making a "hog-killing," you did not even crack an egg. Pardon me. Thanks. Good-by.

Yours truly,

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