Part 7

Walter’s dam is a homely little mare called Ella Brown, with a record of 2:11-1/4, made in 1893, to high-wheel sulky. With the sulky of to-day it would have been 2:05. Never have I known a gamer, sweeter little mare than Ella Brown, and well do I remember when she first came out, and though suffering acutely, all through her racing career with nervicular disease of the foot, often so lame that she could scarcely score down for the word, yet, when she was in the fight, and the clatter and hot breath of her competitors sounded the warning in her ears, she would forget her lameness and her soreness and race like the game little thing she was.

And, like all other great mares, the pedigree of Ella Brown was no accident. She was sired by Prince Pulaski, Jr., and he by old Prince Pulaski, the sire of the old queen, Mattie Hunter, 2:12-3/4. The dam of Ella Brown has only lately been correctly established. She was by Evans’ Joe Bowers, son of Joe Bowers 2:32, son of Traveler. Her second dam was by Tom Hal, sire of Brown Hal, and her third dam was said to be by Brooks, sire of Bonesetter 2:19. Every horseman knows what these mean. Mated with Direct Hal, and hence doubled in strength and greatness, and behold Walter Direct, champion green pacer of the year.

This is the pedigree of Edward Geers--this is the pedigree of Walter. Both honest.

Geers’ honesty is proverbial. His surname is “Honest Ed Geers, the Silent Man of Tennessee.” Did you ever notice how naturally greatness and silence go together? Let that greatest of all great men, Shakespeare, tell it:

Silence oft of pure innocence Persuades when speaking fails.

There are many stories told of the honesty of Ed Geers. It must be remembered that in the life he has led, the terrible, bruising, fighting battles of the turf, when fame and fortune often hang on the wire for which hundreds of others are driving as well as he, that he is often sorely and terribly tempted. Men are human at most, and in a fight for money, for fame, for the joy of victory, all combined in one race, all the great stakes of life, is it a wonder that millionaire horsemen have tried to buy him, that rich breeders have tried to bribe him, greedy owners corner him and tricksters and knaves foul him? Think of twenty-five years of this and then coming out without a stain on his name, a breath of suspicion and the pseudonum of Honest Ed Geers--won, too, in the light of the fiercest conflict.

Walter is game, so is Geers. In the many years in which the latter has been in the sulky he has met with accidents which, if they failed to break his neck, would have broken the heart of an ordinary man.

All horsemen will recall the bad accident he had with Searchlight and the one that sent him to the hospital at Memphis a few years ago, with a broken ankle. But a few weeks ago he was in a bad mix-up at Buffalo, when King Direct’s foot went into the sulky wheel of the contending horse. The Nestor of the turf was unconscious when picked up, but quickly revived and dryly remarked, “Now, don’t make a hurrah of this thing and scare everybody to death for nothing.” That remark is an index of his character. He hates a hurrah. The plumage of the peacock has never become the pit game trimmed for the fight. He is loyal to his friends, modest, quiet, honest, and with reverence for all that is sacred and good. He is one of the large men of his calling.

The training of Walter Direct has been in keeping with Mr. Geers’ theory that colts should be trained early but not hard. From the May night when he was foaled in a terrific thunderstorm, so fierce that Old Wash, who acted as his midwife, was scarcely able to keep him from drowning, until to-day, he has had the best of attention. His dam was fed grain during the nursing period, and Walter soon learned to eat it with her. He was broken to halter as a weanling, and the next spring, Negley, the colored caretaker, broke him to harness, with occasional jogs. The fall after he was a two-year-old he was sent to Memphis to Geers and given his first real lessons, and so trained each winter, with joggings in the summer by Negley at Columbia. Mr. Geers’ rule is to keep them feeling good with a brush now and then for speed. He has a horror of overworking colts. Indeed, his stable is never asked to go the fast heats that many other owners delight in before being shipped to the races. He saves their speed and vital force for the time when it is needed most. In the spring when Walter was a three-year-old he was asked to go a fast mile in 2:14, and was sent to Columbia to be jogged and turned out. The next spring he paced his mile in 2:08-3/4, when he was sent back home again. On September 15, 1904 he was sent again to Mr. Geers and to fame.

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LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.

(Revised by Trotwood and brought up to date.)

A chieftain to the Highland bound Would steal Lord Ullin’s daughter; He bought a new machine in town-- A thing he hadn’t auto.

He sought the castle by the sea And stopped behind the kitchen; “This beats a pony bad,” said he, “Because it don’t need hitchin’.”

He got the girl and started out By pullin’ of a lever, And then that auto turned about-- It was a gay deceiver.

It snorted, backed, went round and round, Broke belly-band and breechin’, Reared up and kicked--then, with a bound, It started through the kitchen.

In there was Ullin fast asleep, His stomach full of mutton; That auto knocked him in a heap It broke his only button.

“O, haste, thee--haste!” the Lady cries, “Tho’ steams around me gather, I’ll meet the ragings of the skies But not a naked Father.”

“Aha--farewell--and now we’ll go,” Said Laddy, smiling grimly; He tried to head her for the door-- She started for the chimney.

“Come back--come back!” old Ullin cries, “Not up there--that’s my larder; You’ll ruin my meat and pies-- Come back an’ take my darter.”

By this the thing grew loud of pace, Its waterworks were shrieking; It started for the old staircase, While Ullin was a-speaking.

It met Mrs. Ullin coming down-- She’d tucked the kids to cover; She wore her night-cap and her gown-- She never wore another!

It buzzed amid the trundle beds, Ran over lairds and lasses, Went through the window, down the sheds, And waked up all the asses.

It chased the hound-pups round the yard, Ran over kairn and cattle; The clans turned out with tunics barr’d, And pibrocks, armed for battle.

The girl had fainted, sore dismayed, Twice had it turned her over: One lovely arm was stretched for aid, And one was round her lover.

Up spake a hardy Highland wight-- (A rope was round him, ready): “Just watch me rope her hind leg tight And stop her, staunch and steady!”

He threw and caught her fast and fair, It set their blood to fighting-- They saw him sailing through the air, A tail he was--and kiting!

Now Ullin had a mother-in-law, A saint she was from Zion; Her lungs were rubber, cheeks were bra’, Her body--well, SCRAP iron!

She waked and heard the dreadful din, Ran down, the thing to worst it; It struck her, knocked its inwards in, It wheezed and groaned--and burst it!

They slew poor Laddy where he sat With blunderbuss and bullit; “’Tis not,” said Ullin, “’cause the brat Was monkeyin’ with my pullit,

“But comin’ here in this vile car To run off with my darter, An’ not like neighbor Lochinvar, On hoss-flesh, as he orter.”

--JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

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_Humor is a great thing, but it has never yet won a battle, built a city or bred a horse._

The Meaning of Sorrow

BY REV. W. D. CAPERS, RECTOR ST. PETER’S CHURCH, COLUMBIA, TENN.

“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word.” (Ps. 119: 67.)

From one point of view there is no mystery so impenetrable as that involved in the suffering and sorrow which exists in every department and sphere of life. The suffering of humanity, the fact that “the world groaneth and travaileth in pain until now” presented to the sensitive mind of Dr. John Hall the supreme difficulty with which he struggled during a great part of his remarkable ministry, until courage, faith and experience taught him to understand and to recognize suffering as having its mission in life and in the development of character, just as happiness has its place, each acting as one of the two great interpreters of moral and spiritual development. It is impossible to have a creed or to form an adequate philosophy of life and overlook the really essential and universal place suffering, in one form or another, occupies therein. Just try and think, if you can, of a world in which there is no suffering, no sorrow, no pain; a world in which there are no tears, no bitterness, no woe. The thing is unthinkable, it is simply inconceivable, and as a condition of life, utterly and eternally impossible. Why? Because pleasure and pain are relative. Suffering and joy face each other in a blessed contrast. There has to be a standard of comparison by which we are to make the proper estimate of these things, otherwise we would be unable to distinguish between them; otherwise happiness would have no reality to it, no vitality in it, and neither strength nor power of growth, while life would be without an essential variety of emotions, and therefore necessarily become “stale, flat and unprofitable” indeed. A remarkable description of hell’s severest punishment, though very fanciful, is that, wherein the victims are made to do that which they most loved to do here in this life, incessantly, continuously and strenuously. The suggestion to my mind is very significant and teaches that the most tortuous and horrible suffering is just that which comes through uninterrupted monotony. To dance your life away, to drink your life away, to play and fritter your life away in purposeless amusement and never to suffer a reverse or be conscious of a struggle, never to know a pang of pain or experience a momentary disappointment, may seem to those who have just sipped an occasional drop from the cup of pleasure and mirth an enviable existence, a consummation in life devoutly to be wished. But to dance or play or laugh or sing through endless eons of time and to experience not one inspiring struggle which brings moral and spiritual strengthening, to have to live through eternity would be misery indeed. Suffering then, in the first place, heightens and intensifies our joys, it helps develop the power of enjoyment, and it makes a larger and a more real happiness possible. To illustrate: There was unspeakable joy in the home of the prodigal, as the aged father rushed out to meet and greet his wayward boy, for to the old man his son had been dead, and behold he was alive again, he had been lost and was found. It was the suffering of the separation which alone made possible the intense and glorified happiness of their reunion. And how often it happens that not only are “troubled times praying times,” but that “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” Thus suffering often brings a man to his senses and makes him conscious of his dependence upon God. As we read, it was only when the prodigal “came to himself” that he concluded to arise and go to his father, and we must conclude that it was the suffering, sorrow and bitterness of privation and disappointed hopes that drove him to a realization of his true condition, and in the end brought to him a real and lasting happiness. In this and in similar acts of conduct history never fails to repeat itself in every age, in every epoch, in every generation, as well as yearly, daily and hourly in the life of individuals and of nations. Opulence, ease, prosperity and an unwholesome peace have repeatedly rushed peoples and principalities to a shameful and untimely ruin, wherein men have lost their reason and nations drunk with a sense of power have reeled and staggered to and fro like a drunken man and then lay prostrate in the dust. In support of this I appeal to history. In support of this Mr. Kipling appeals to history when in his recessional poem he said:

“Far called our navies melt away-- On dune and headland sinks the fire-- Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the nations, spare us yet Lest we forget--lest we forget.”

Suffering then, often serves to give us a fuller, freer, wiser and wider view of life. It was only when through suffering that the prodigal “came to himself,” and when he received this self-revelation, then he “arose and went to his father,” and in like manner when man “comes to himself” he goes to God. But mark you, self-revelation seldom if ever comes to one while sailing the seas of glory and sounding all the depths and shoals of mere worldly splendor and prosperity. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept my word,” said the Psalmist, and when Job came to himself through the trial of his faith and patience, he ceased to question the ways of Providence, he reverently placed his hand upon his mouth and would “speak no further,” for fear he now no longer knew God “by the hearing of the ear,” but by the “seeing of the eye,” and he went to his knees in supplication, “and the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.”

Again, we are to notice that suffering brings us courage and broadens and deepens and intensifies our sympathies. “Pity makes the whole world akin,” and so quickens our consciousness of brotherliness. “At sea when the ship is in great peril the passengers crowd together, not because they can escape peril by facing it in company, but because they can gain courage by companionship. The sense of human kinship grows fresh and keen when men stand together in the face of a common danger.” It is therefore through suffering that men gain courage through a vivid realization of the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the race. It often is as Dr. Mabie has said: “Through sorrowful ways men have climbed to the heights from which they now look into the heavens and over the landscape of life.”

And this brings us to our final thought which is that suffering in some of its manifold forms gives that variety to life which is essential to the proper development of all the faculties of heart, soul, mind and body. By way of illustration, let us suppose that you could take from the public and private libraries of the world every book that contained a poem, a reference or a treatise touching the theme of sorrow, and what a dull, dead, gloomy monotony of uninspired literature would remain, while, in rather figurative language, the world itself could not contain the books thus mutilated and cast away. Apply the same test to art, and the galleries of the world would be destroyed, miles upon miles of bare walls would greet us at every turn as we made our heart-sick pilgrimage from gallery to gallery. Apply the same test to music, and you will never again hear the singing of a song with genius and power in it strong enough to stir the heart’s deepest emotions or to cause the soul to glow with a conscious ecstacy of faith and hope and the brain to burn with the fire of a high and holy resolution. The organ’s rich peal, the ring of stringed instruments, the wailing of the lute would lose the voice of melody, while “The Marseillaise,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Dixie Land” and similar martial airs would never have found voice to speak for patriotic devotion or to chant the glory of a martyrdom for home or for country, had not the spirit of sacrifice and suffering pervaded them and given to them immortality.

No, suffering is a vital part and condition of life, and from the right use of it we gather strength and grow beautiful in moral and spiritual stature, while we gain the only happiness that maintains and has power to bless mankind, happiness which is the child of conscious strength acquired on the battlefield of conflict and in the vale of tears. How then are you going to use the sorrows, the afflictions, the disappointments and the trials that must come inevitably into your life? The late Maltby Babcock has a fine passage in this connection: “Byron eagerly coveted a place among the immortals, yet accepted his club feet with cursings and bitterness; while St. Paul accepted his ‘thorn in the flesh’ with sweetness and was thereby exalted and transfigured. The poet wishes to become a hero for the public while privately tasting of the sweets of profligacy. Sinning against his finer feelings his art steadily declines, until at thirty-five it has passed into the sear and yellow leaf.” Let us strive to emulate the example of St. Paul, and when having no power to expel from our life that which brings pain and suffering, let us endeavor to accept such sorrow as an opportunity to develop character, and thereby be exalted and made strong, remembering always that since “The Man of Sorrows” hung upon the cross, transfigured sorrow is that which has blessed humanity most, and brought men nearest to the heart and mind of the Master. And train yourself to believe that.

“Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been learned, And sun and stars forevermore have set, The things which one weak judgment here has spurned, The things o’er which we grieved, with lashes wet, Will flash before us out of life’s dark night, As stars shine best in deepest tints of blue; And we shall see how all God’s plans were right, And that which seemed reproof was love most true.”

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OUR STAR

(In memory of Mrs. Annie Horne Fry, who died August 13, 1905.)

Sunset and Sorrow’s tide, Over the bar-- Sunset, and daylight died Seeing a Star.

Twilight, and Hope had fled, Fled from afar. Twilight, and Hope lay dead, Holding a Star.

Midnight and mourning loud Cometh to mar. Midnight, yet o’er her shroud Shineth the Star.

Morning, and from the mist-- Sweet Avatar-- Hope-crowned and Sorrow-kissed Standeth our Star.

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

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=TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY= Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.

TROTWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY, Nashville, Tenn.

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE, Editor-in-Chief.

E. E. SWEETLAND Business Manager

GEO. E. McKENNON President JOHN W. FRY Vice-President EUGENE ANDERSON Treas. WOOTEN MOORE Sec’y.

=TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION=: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents. Advertising Rates on application.

NASHVILLE, TENN. OCTOBER, 1905.

With Trotwood

There are nearly a fourth of a thousand farm papers in the United States, all bent on teaching the farmers how to attend to their own business. Some of these papers are good, many are bad and the others are awful. The good ones may be had for a dollar and the others for the asking. Looking the literary field over, everybody seems to be entitled to something good but the farmer. From the roasts and broils of the intellectual feasts of to-day he will get the leavings, next week, in the shape of a stale hash, served on cheap paper, flanked with guessing contests and patent medicine advertisements and surrounded by the green, green cresses of the same old thing.

And yet a large and most respectable majority of the people of these United States are farmers or interested in the soil. Their daily needs include all the things the man in the city needs and much more, for the man in the city does not plow, neither does he reap nor sow. These people of the soil are progressive to the extent of their chances, honest, and seekers of the truth and better ways, lovers of the good in fiction and in fact. They constitute about seventy per cent of our population and commit about two per cent of our crime. Why should not they have a literature? Why should not a magazine laid around the soil, come into their homes, as it comes into the homes of the dwellers in the strenuous city, not to teach them their business but to help to amuse, to interest, to uplift?

This is the object of Trotwood’s Monthly. If it does not tell you when to plant your beans and when to eat your potatoes, it hopes to give you a literature that will help you to be satisfied with your diet of potatoes and your burden of beans. For in truth, the editor of Trotwood’s Monthly does not know all about potatoes nor beans nor corn. Indeed, he is willing to admit that any good farmer in all this country who knows his business knows more about it than the editor of Trotwood’s Monthly. For his business in life is literature. He has made it his profession, as the farmer or stockman has made farming and stock-raising his, and he has toiled at it through years in the heat of the noonday sun and often--often--while the world around him slept, by the light of a sleepless lamp. He will not try to tell you, therefore, of the things he knows but little about, neither will he attempt to carry intellectual coals to a new castle of newly mown hay. He will not attempt the impossible and the ridiculous; but if, in looking over his handiwork month after month, you find something to make you forget for awhile the burdens and problems of life; if through his magazine you learn to realize the unseen sweetness and independence of the life of him who claims kindred with the soil; if you are shown nature with truer eye, and learn to love her and all that is hers; if you catch, now and then, a spark of that finer spirit that burns so brightly in true literature, lighting the lamp of ambition in your boy or girl, and carrying you for a moment from the world of soil to the world of soul; if something in it uplifts you, and something amuses you and something in the special features by experts in the classes, who know, instructs and helps you, then you may know that Trotwood’s Monthly has done for you what it started out to do.

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Trotwood’s Monthly will, each issue, contain special expert articles on subjects relating to its scope. There are four in this issue, and we have reason to be proud of all of them. This is an age of concentration, of specialization. It is the man who concentrates that accomplishes. Knowledge to-day is so vast and covers so great a scope that Solomon’s wisdom would scarcely attract attention unless the saffron press wrote him with pictures of his wives, and that might make some think he was not wise at all.

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LINES TO AN AUTOMOBILE.

Break, break, break, Some other man’s face with glee, Or shatter his collar-bone if you will, But, pray, don’t run over me!

O, woe is the farmer’s boy As he shouts with his sister at play. But the chauffeur darts from a cloud of dust, And carries a leg away.

O, woe is the man who drives Where the automobile sweeps; His horse butts into the wayside wall And smashes the cart for keeps.

And the big machine goes on, A-kiting over the hill, But, O, for the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still.

Break, break, break, Whate’er in your path you see, But an arm and an ear and a horse that is dead Will never come back to me.

--From a Horseman.

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This is the page where all of those who wish to, or who have a message to tell, may come in and talk with Trotwood. Do not be backward--you are welcome. But be sure that what you write shall be of general interest to our readers. Remember that they are paying for the Monthly to be interested and instructed. So come in, but come in with something to say, something that will help others.

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