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SEABISCUIT
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Charles Howard, Red Pollard, and Tom Smith

(KEENELAND-COOK)
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SEABISCUIT
h
A n A m e r i c a n L e ge n d
LAURA
HILLENBRAND
d
RANDOM HOUSE
NEW YORK
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Copyright © 2001 by Laura Hillenbrand
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simulta-
neously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
R andom House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 0-375-50695-0
v 1.0
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
24689753
Book design by Jennifer Ann Daddio
Cover art copyright © 2003 Universal Studios Publishing Rights a division of

Universal Studios Licensing, LLP. All rights reserved..
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For Borden
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“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”
— e r n e s t h e m i n g way, THE SUN ALSO RISES
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CONTENTS
Preface xi
PA R T I
1. The Day of the Horse Is Past 3

2. The Lone Plainsman 19
3. Mean, Restive, and Ragged 31
4. The Cougar and the Iceman 49
5. A Boot on One Foot, a Toe Tag on the Other 65
6. Light and Shadow 83
PA R T I I
7. Learn Your Horse 99

8. Fifteen Strides 113
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9. Gravity 127
10. War Admiral 141
11. No Pollard, No Seabiscuit 155
12. All I Need Is Luck 173
13. Hardball 183
14. The Wise We Boys 199
15. Fortune’s Fool 217
16. I Know My Horse 229
17. The Dingbustingest Contest You Ever Clapped an Eye On 239
18. Deal 251
19. The Second Civil War 265
PA R T I I I
20. “All Four of His Legs Are Broken” 281

21. A Long, Hard Pull 295
22. Four Good Legs Between Us 303
23. One Hundred Grand 317
Epilogue 329
Acknowledgments 341
Notes 349
Index 385
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P R E FA C E
I n 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year’s

number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler, or
Mussolini. It wasn’t Pope Pius XI, nor was it Lou Gehrig, Howard
Hughes, or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column
inches in 1938 wasn’t even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged
racehorse named Seabiscuit.
In the latter half of the Depression, Seabiscuit was nothing short of a
cultural icon in America, enjoying adulation so intense and broad-based
that it transcended sport. When he raced, his fans choked local roads,
poured out of special cross-country “Seabiscuit Limited” trains, packed
the hotels, and cleaned out the restaurants. They tucked their Roosevelt
dollars into Seabiscuit wallets, bought Seabiscuit hats on Fifth Avenue,
played at least nine parlor games bearing his image. Tuning in to radio
broadcasts of his races was a weekend ritual across the country, drawing
as many as forty million listeners. His appearances smashed attendance
records at nearly every major track and drew two of the three largest
throngs ever to see a horse race in the United States. In an era when the
United States’ population was less than half its current size, seventy-
eight thousand people witnessed his last race, a crowd comparable to
those at today’s Super Bowls. As many as forty thousand fans mobbed
tracks just to watch his workouts, while thousands of others braved ice
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xii ■ P R E FA C E
storms and murderous heat to catch a glimpse of his private eighty-foot

Pullman railcar. He galloped over Manhattan on massive billboards and
was featured week after week, year after year, in Time, Life, Newsweek,
Look, Pic, and The New Yorker. His trainer, jockey, and owner became
heroes in their own right. Their every move was painted by the glare of
the flashbulb.
They had come from nowhere. The horse, a smallish, mud-colored an-
imal with forelegs that didn’t straighten all the way, spent nearly two sea-
sons floundering in the lowest ranks of racing, misunderstood and
mishandled. His jockey, Red Pollard, was a tragic-faced young man who
had been abandoned as a boy at a makeshift racetrack cut through a Mon-
tana hay field. He came to his partnership with Seabiscuit after years as a
part-time prizefighter and failing jockey, lugging his saddle through myr-
iad places, getting punched bloody in cow-town boxing rings, sleeping on
stall floors. Seabiscuit’s trainer, a mysterious, virtually mute mustang
breaker named Tom Smith, was a refugee from the vanishing frontier, bear-
ing with him generations of lost wisdom about the secrets of horses.
Seabiscuit’s owner, a broad, beaming former cavalryman named Charles
Howard, had begun his career as a bicycle mechanic before parlaying 21
cents into an automotive empire.
In 1936, on a sultry August Sunday in Detroit, Pollard, Smith, and
Howard formed an unlikely alliance. Recognizing the talent dormant in
the horse and in one another, they began a rehabilitation of Seabiscuit that
would lift him, and them, from obscurity.
For the Seabiscuit crew and for America, it was the beginning of five up-
roarious years of anguish and exultation. From 1936 to 1940, Seabiscuit en-
dured a remarkable run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and injury to establish
himself as one of history’s most extraordinary athletes. Graced with blister-
ing speed,tactical versatility,and indomitable will,he shipped more than fifty
thousand exhausting railroad miles, carried staggering weight to victory
against the best horses in the country, and shattered more than a dozen track
records. His controversial rivalry with Triple Crown winner War Admiral
culminated in a spectacular match race that is still widely regarded as the
greatest horse race ever run. His epic, trouble-plagued four-year quest to
conquer the world’s richest race became one of the most celebrated and
widely followed struggles in sports. And in 1940 after suffering severe in-
juries that were thought to have ended their careers, the aging horse and his
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SEABISCUIT ■ xiii
jockey returned to the track together in an attempt to claim the one prize that
had escaped them.
Along the way, the little horse and the men who rehabilitated him cap-
tured the American imagination. It wasn’t just greatness that drew the peo-
ple to them. It was their story.
It began with a young man on a train, pushing west.
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PART I
Howard at the wheel of his Buick race car, San Francisco, 1906
( lt . c o l . m i c h a e l c . h o wa r d )
Chapter 1
T H E D AY O F T H E
H O R S E I S PA S T
C harles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had
to either climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room,
working a cigarette in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish.
They couldn’t help themselves. Fifty-eight years old in 1935, Howard was
a tall, glowing man in a big suit and a very big Buick. But it wasn’t his phys-
ical bearing that did it. He lived on a California ranch so huge that a man
could take a wrong turn on it and be lost forever, but it wasn’t his circum-
stances either. Nor was it that he spoke loud or long; the surprise of the
man was his understatement, the quiet and kindly intimacy of his acquain-
tance. What drew people to him was something intangible, an air about
him. There was a certain inevitability to Charles Howard, an urgency ra-
diating from him that made people believe that the world was always going
to bend to his wishes.
On an afternoon in 1903, long before the big cars and the ranch and all
the money, Howard began his adulthood with only that air of destiny and
21 cents in his pocket. He sat in the swaying belly of a transcontinental
train, snaking west from New York. He was twenty-six, handsome, gentle-
manly, with a bounding imagination. Back then he had a lot more hair than
anyone who knew him later would have guessed. Years in the saddles of
4 ■ LAURA HILLENBRAND
military-school horses had taught him to carry his six-foot-one-inch frame

straight up.
He was eastern born and bred, but he had a westerner’s restlessness.
He had tried to satisfy it by enlisting in the cavalry for the Spanish-
American War, and though he became a skilled horseman, thanks to bad
timing and dysentery he never got out of Camp Wheeler in Alabama. After
his discharge, he got a job in New York as a bicycle mechanic, took up
competitive bicycle racing, got married, and had two sons. It seems to have
been a good life, but the East stifled Howard. His mind never seemed to
settle down. His ambitions had fixed upon the vast new America on the
other side of the Rockies. That day in 1903 he couldn’t resist the impulse
anymore. He left everything he’d ever known behind, promised his wife
Fannie May he’d send for her soon, and got on the train.
He got off in San Francisco. His two dimes and a penny couldn’t carry
him far, but somehow he begged and borrowed enough money to open a
little bicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue downtown. He tinkered
with the bikes and waited for something interesting to come his way.
It came in the form of a string of distressed-looking men who began ap-
pearing at his door. Eccentric souls with too much money in their pockets
and far too much time on their hands, they had blown thick wads of cash
on preposterous machines called automobiles. Some of them were feeling
terribly sorry about it.
The horseless carriage was just arriving in San Francisco, and its debut
was turning into one of those colorfully unmitigated disasters that bring
misery to everyone but historians. Consumers were staying away from the
“devilish contraptions” in droves. The men who had invested in them
were the subjects of cautionary tales, derision, and a fair measure of public
loathing. In San Francisco in 1903, the horse and buggy was not going the
way of the horse and buggy.
For good reason. The automobile, so sleekly efficient on paper, was in
practice a civic menace, belching out exhaust, kicking up storms of dust,
becoming hopelessly mired in the most innocuous-looking puddles, tying
up horse traffic, and raising an earsplitting cacophony that sent buggy
horses fleeing. Incensed local lawmakers responded with monuments to
legislative creativity. The laws of at least one town required automobile
drivers to stop, get out, and fire off Roman candles every time horse-drawn
vehicles came into view. Massachusetts tried and, fortunately, failed to
mandate that cars be equipped with bells that would ring with each revo-
SEABISCUIT ■ 5
lution of the wheels. In some towns police were authorized to disable pass-
ing cars with ropes, chains, wires, and even bullets, so long as they took
reasonable care to avoid gunning down the drivers. San Francisco didn’t
escape the legislative wave. Bitter local officials pushed through an ordi-
nance banning automobiles from the Stanford campus and all tourist
areas, effectively exiling them from the city.
Nor were these the only obstacles. The asking price for the cheapest
automobile amounted to twice the $500 annual salary of the average citi-
zen—some cost three times that much—and all that bought you was four
wheels, a body, and an engine. “Accessories” like bumpers, carburetors,
and headlights had to be purchased separately. Just starting the thing,
through hand cranking, could land a man in traction. With no gas stations,
owners had to lug five-gallon fuel cans to local drugstores, filling them for
60 cents a gallon and hoping the pharmacist wouldn’t substitute benzene
for gasoline. Doctors warned women away from automobiles, fearing slow
suffocation in noxious fumes. A few adventurous members of the gentler
sex took to wearing ridiculous “windshield hats,” watermelon-sized fabric
balloons, equipped with little glass windows, that fit over the entire head,
leaving ample room for corpulent Victorian coiffures. Navigation was an-
other nightmare. The first of San Francisco’s road signs were only just
being erected, hammered up by an enterprising insurance underwriter
who hoped to win clients by posting directions into the countryside,
whose drivers retreated for automobile “picnic parties” held out of the
view of angry townsfolk.
Finally, driving itself was something of a touch-and-go pursuit. The
first automobiles imported to San Francisco had so little power that they
rarely made it up the hills. The grade of Nineteenth Avenue was so daunt-
ing for the engines of the day that watching automobiles straining for the
top became a local pastime. The automobiles’ delicate constitutions and
general faintheartedness soon became a source of scorn. One cartoon from
the era depicted a wealthy couple standing on a roadside next to its dearly
departed vehicle. The caption read, “The Idle Rich.”
Where San Franciscans saw an urban nuisance, Charles Howard saw
opportunity. Automobile-repair shops hadn’t been created yet—and
would have made little sense anyway as few were fool enough to buy a car.
Owners had no place to go when their cars expired. A bicycle repairman
was the closest thing to an auto mechanic available, and Howard’s shop
was conveniently close to the neighborhoods of wealthy car owners.
Howard hadn’t been in town long before the owners began showing up on
his doorstep.
Howard had a weakness for lost causes. He accepted the challenge,
poked around in the cars, and figured out how to fix them. Soon he was
showing up at the primitive automobile races held around the city. Before
long, he was driving in them. The first American race, run around
Evanston, Illinois, had been held only eight years before, with the winning
car ripping along at the dizzying average speed of seven and a half miles
per hour. But by 1903, automotive horsepower had greatly improved—
one car averaged 65.3 mph in a cross-European race that season—making
the races a good spectacle. It also made for astronomical casualty rates.
The European race, for one, turned into such a godawful bloodletting that
it was ultimately halted due to “too many fatalities.”
Howard was beginning to see these contraptions as the instrument of
his ambition. Taking an audacious step, he booked a train east, got off in
Detroit, and somehow talked his way into a meeting with Will Durant,
chief of Buick Automobiles and future founder of General Motors.
Howard told Durant that he wanted to be a part of the industry, troubled
though it was. Durant liked what he saw and hired him to set up dealer-
ships and recruit dealers. Howard returned to San Francisco, opened the
Pioneer Motor Company on Buick’s behalf, and hired a local man to man-
age it. But on a checkup visit, he was dismayed to find that the manager
was focusing his sales effort not on Buicks but on ponderous Thomas Fly-
ers. Howard went back to Detroit and told Durant that he could do better.
Durant was sold. Howard walked away with the Buick franchise for all of
San Francisco. It was 1905, and he was just twenty-eight years old.
Howard returned to San Francisco by train with three Buicks in tow.
By some accounts, he first housed his automobiles in the parlor of his old
bicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue before moving to a modest build-
ing on Golden Gate Avenue, half a block from Van Ness. He brought Fan-
nie May out to join him. With two young boys to feed, and two more soon
to follow, Fannie May must have been alarmed by her husband’s career
choice. Two years had done little to pacify the San Franciscan hostility for
the automobile. Howard failed to sell a single car.
A t 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, the earth beneath San Francisco heaved
inward upon itself in a titanic, magnitude 7.8 convulsion. In sixty sec-
SEABISCUIT ■ 7
onds the city shuddered down. Fires sprang up amid the ruined buildings,
converged, and raced toward Howard’s dealership, consuming four city
blocks per hour. With the water lines ruptured and the sewers bled dry,
there was nothing to check its course. Wagon horses ran in a panic through
the streets, snapped their legs in the rubble, and collapsed from exhaus-
tion. The horse-drawn city was in desperate need of vehicles to carry fire-
men and bear the injured, 3,000 dead, and 225,000 homeless out of the
fire’s path. Fleeing citizens offered thousands for horses, but there were
none to be had. People were fashioning makeshift gurneys from baby car-
riages and trunks nailed to roller skates, pulling them themselves. There
was only one transportation option left. “We suddenly appreciated that
San Francisco was truly a city of magnificent distances,” wrote one wit-
ness. “The autos alone remained to conquer space.”
Charles Howard, owner of three erstwhile unsaleable automobiles,
was suddenly the richest man in town. He saved his cars from the flames
and transformed them into ambulances. By one account, Howard himself
served as a driver, speeding into the ruins to gather the stranded and rush
them down to rescue ships on the bay. His cars were probably also em-
ployed to bear massive stacks of army explosives, which were used to cre-
ate firebreaks.
On April 19 the fire drove the soldiers and firemen west into Howard’s
neighborhood. Van Ness Avenue, half a block from Howard’s dealership,
was the broadest street in the city. The firefighters chose it as the site of
their last stand. As the fire bore down on them, they unloaded dynamite
from the automobiles, packed it into Howard’s dealership and the sur-
rounding buildings, and blew it all sky-high to widen the firebreak. That
evening the fire roared over the rubble of Howard’s dealership and
reached Van Ness. The exhausted firefighters refused to give. Though it
burned for two more days, the fire did not jump the road.
Howard lost everything but his cars, but he had been insured. The reim-
bursement check that arrived at his door offered him a painless way out of his
automobile venture. But Howard was certain that he could coax his new city
into the automotive age. The earthquake had already done half the work for
him, proving the automobile’s superiority to the horse in utility. Two weeks
after the quake, a day’s rental of a horse and buggy cost $5; a two-seated run-
about cost $100 a day. All Howard needed to do was prove his automobiles’
durability. He put up one of the first temporary buildings in the quake’s
aftermath, moved the cars in, and set out to craft a new image for Buick.
F ew men have demonstrated a better understanding of the importance

of image than Howard. He could probably thank his father, Robert
Stewart, for that. While accumulating a vast fortune in his native Canada,
Stewart had become the focal point of a business scandal. Though his role
in it remains unclear, his subsequent behavior suggests a spectacular fall
from grace: He left the country, changed his last name to Howard, and
spent the rest of his life in exclusive hotels and clubs all over the eastern
United States. Listing his occupation as “traveler,” he never again owned a
permanent home or stayed in one place for long. He married and divorced
repeatedly, gaining notoriety among gossip columnists for slugging one of
his wives and engaging in public shouting matches with the others.
Charles Howard was never close to his father. Growing up in a Victo-
rian upper-class America in which reputation was social currency, he must
have felt the sting of the family’s ignominy. He made himself into his fa-
ther’s antithesis. Whereas Robert Stewart Howard was wealthy, his son ev-
idently refused to base his life on its advantages, embarking on his
westward journey with virtually no money to his name. Whereas his father
lacked the interest or discipline to save his reputation and that of his fam-
ily, Charles measured himself by his image in the minds of others. It was a
preoccupation, verging on obsession, that would inform his decisions, and
guide his energies. By instinct or by study, he had an exceptionally firm
grasp of the human imagination and how to appeal to it. Habitually putting
himself in other people’s shoes, he was in his private life charming and en-
gaging, generous and genuinely empathetic. In his public life, he demon-
strated a prodigious talent for promotion and manipulation.
Howard knew that to get his automobiles into the public eye, he had to
get his name into the press. He also knew that car salesmen didn’t interest
journalists. Race-car daredevils did. Donning a gridiron helmet, a white
scarf and goggles, Howard slipped behind the wheel and put on a holy
show. He drove his Buicks in breakneck speed races at Tanforan and hare-
brained hill climbs up the harrowing grades of Diablo Hill and Grizzly
Peak. He ground through twenty-four-hour endurance tests and “stamina
runs,” in which contestants looped up and down local roads until their be-
leaguered automobiles exploded or shed their wheels—the last one rolling
was the winner. He was reportedly the first man to send a car down into
Death Valley and the first to push over the snowbanks of the Sierra
Nevada, performing the feat on an annual basis. The ventures were not
SEABISCUIT ■ 9
without risk. Drivers were killed all the time. The cars also came to sad
ends; the joyous celebration after the first Skaggs Springs economy run
came to a tearful halt when the winning car spontaneously burst into
flames and burned to the ground. Howard was utterly fearless and wildly
successful, especially with his sturdy new Buick White Streaks. When he
wasn’t winning other people’s races, he was organizing his own and press-
ing other Buick agents to join him.
The reporters ate from his hand. Here was the dream subject: daring,
dashing, photogenic, articulate, a man who was always doing something
stunning and always saying something quotable afterward. Out of the rub-
ble of San Francisco, a perfect marriage arose. Howard gave the press a
banner headline; the press gave him the public. He and his Buicks became
local legends.
Where the press fell short, Howard and the Buick management filled
in by papering the city with full-page ads and brochures trumpeting every
win. Critical to the publicity’s success was Howard’s shrewdest decision.
He recognized that the common practice of competing with specially out-
fitted racing cars muted the promotional effects of victories, given that the
consumer knew he was not buying the race car. So Howard opted to race
unmodified stock models, exactly the same cars customers could buy off
the dealer floor. He also made the transition from horseman to auto driver
as easy as possible for prospective buyers. Because virtually none of his
customers had owned a car before, he gave free driving lessons. Most im-
portant, he began accepting horses as trade-ins. The experience he gained
in judging horses would be invaluable to him later, though he would have
scoffed at the idea at the time. “The day of the horse is past, and the peo-
ple in San Francisco want automobiles,” he wrote in 1908. “I wouldn’t
give five dollars for the best horse in this country.”
The promotion worked. In 1908 Howard sold eighty-five White
Streaks for $1,000 each.
In 1909 he paid a visit to Durant. The new GM chief was grateful;
Howard had virtually created what would be one of the industry’s leading
markets. With a handshake, Durant gave Howard sole distributorship of
Buick as well as GM’s new acquisitions, National and Oldsmobile, for all
of the western United States. Howard began ordering multiple trainloads
of cars, some three hundred at a time, and printing his orders and the com-
pany shipping confirmations in full-page ads. He was soon the world’s
largest distributor in the fastest-growing industry in history. Throughout
the West, frontier regions that had long revolved around the horse were
now dotted with sleek, modern Howard dealerships.
He wasn’t done yet. Durant, for the umpteenth time, took a huge fi-
nancial leap before looking, and emerged bankrupt. Howard bailed him
out with a reported $190,000 personal loan. Durant repaid him with GM
stock and a generous percentage of gross sales, guaranteed for life. A poor
bicycle repairman just a few years before, Howard soon had hundreds of
thousands of dollars for every penny he had brought to California.
In the mid-1920s, Howard began to live like the magnate he had be-
come. In 1924 he funneled $150,000 into the establishment of the Charles
S. Howard Foundation and built a home for children suffering from tuber-
culosis and rheumatic fever. It was the first of a lengthy list of philan-
thropic projects he spearheaded. He also began to live a little. Finding his
elder sons, Lin and Charles junior, attempting to play polo with rake han-
dles and a cork ball, he divested Long Island of its best polo ponies and
gave them to his boys, who became internationally famous players. A few
years later he outfitted a gigantic yacht, the Aras, rounded up a crew of sci-
entists, and sailed them all down to the Galápagos for a research expedi-
tion. He returned with a rare blue-footed booby and a collection of other
animals, which he donated to a zoo.
He also lived out a fantasy that he had probably cultivated since child-
hood. He stumbled upon a magnificent ranch sprawling over seventeen
thousand acres of California’s remote redwood country, 150 miles north of
San Francisco, near a tiny lumber village called Willits. The ranch had
stood uninhabited since the family living there had perished in a diphthe-
ria epidemic. Fulfilling a long-held desire to be a rancher, Howard bought
it. Though he stayed in a mansion in the San Francisco suburb of
Burlingame whenever he was on business, Howard thought of the ranch as
his true home. For all his love of the automobile, Howard was still attracted
to the romance of frontier simplicity. He strove to make the ranch, called
Ridgewood, a model of rustic self-sufficiency, complete with massive
herds of cattle and sheep, several hundred horses, a dairy, a slaughter-
house, and fruit orchards. Dressed in embroidered western shirts,
Howard surveyed his ranch from a stock saddle on a cow pony. But he
couldn’t resist a little modernity here and there; he sped around his lake in
gleaming speedboats. On the hills of Ridgewood, removed from his busi-
ness, “Poppie” Howard watched his sons grow.
SEABISCUIT ■ 11
O n the weekend of May 8 and 9, 1926, Charles Howard took Fannie

May to Del Monte, California, to attend the opening of a new hotel.
They left their fifteen-year-old son, Frankie, behind at Ridgewood. Early
that Sunday morning, Frankie borrowed one of his father’s old trucks and
set out for a morning of trout fishing with two friends. At about 9:00 a.m.,
they gathered up a big catch and headed back toward the main house.
Driving along a canyon road about two miles from the house, Frankie saw
a large rock in his path and swerved to avoid it. A front wheel dipped over
the side of the canyon and Frankie lost control. The truck flipped head-
long into the canyon. No one saw it crash.
Frankie’s friends found themselves at the bottom of the canyon,
thrown clear. The truck was near them, wheels facing skyward. Struggling
to the vehicle, the boys saw Frankie pinned under it. They ran to the ranch
house and notified the ranch foreman. There was no hospital anywhere
near Ridgewood. The closest thing was the house of the town physician,
“Doc” Babcock, who kept a few spare beds to cope with the cuts and
bruises suffered by the local loggers. The foreman fetched Babcock
and they rushed to the scene. Babcock climbed through the wreckage and
used what little medical equipment he had to try to revive Frankie. He was
too late. When the Howards arrived by special charter train from Del
Monte, they were told that their son was dead, his skull and spine crushed.
Howard retreated to Ridgewood and remained secluded there for
months, prostrate with grief. Doc Babcock came to console him and found
the auto magnate wrestling with the question of how he could best memo-
rialize his son. Babcock had an idea: Build a hospital in Willits. Howard
embraced the idea, underwrote the entire cost, and arranged to have
Ridgewood’s orchards, fields, and dairy supply the hospital with food.
Ground was broken by an ox-drawn plow in 1927, and in 1928, with Doc
Babcock at the helm, the modern, well-equipped Frank R. Howard
Memorial Hospital was open for business. Howard remained on its board
of directors for the rest of his life.
He would never truly recover from Frankie’s death. In his Buick office
in San Francisco he kept a large painting of Frankie, kneeling beside a dog.
Many years later, a teenaged job applicant named Bill Nichols casually
asked Howard if he was the boy in the picture.
“Do you think it looks like me?” Charles asked.
Nichols said yes. When he looked up, tears were running down
Howard’s face.
I n the 1920s California was not the place to be for a man in a sinning
frame of mind. The temperance folks had given America Prohibition,
and had thrown in a ban on gambling while they were at it. A guy couldn’t
cavort with women, and thanks to the ban on cabaret dancing, he couldn’t
even watch women cavorting by themselves. If he was discovered in a hotel
room with a woman not his wife, his name would appear in the section of
the newspaper reserved for public shaming. Everything was closed on
Sundays. The only place to go was church. There he could hear the usual
warnings about alcohol, gambling, dancing, and cavorting. When the
Southern California ministers were really whipping their congregations
into a froth, they would get rolling on the subject of “the Road to Hell,” a
byway that ran south from San Diego. At the end of it stood the town of Ti-
juana. “Sin City,” a place where all those despicable things, and a whole lot
more, were done right out in the open.
You can’t buy that kind of advertising. Thousands of Americans a day
were sprinting for the border.
For all the fire-and-brimstone buildup, the avenue that led down to Ti-
juana was a little disappointing. One might expect the Road to Hell to be
well-paved. It wasn’t much more than a meandering dirt lane, one car wide
in spots, cutting through the blandness of sagebrush and ducking down to
an anemic border river. If travelers were on foot, they could usually wade
across and catch a burro taxi on the other side. If they had wheels, they
could take a somewhat rickety-looking bridge, followed by a road dipping
into Tijuana.
Now, there was some sinning. Only recently a sleepy village, Tijuana
was fashioning itself into California’s guilty pleasure. For every restraint in
force north of the border, Tijuana offered unlimited indulgence. During
Prohibition, one third of the businesses revolved around alcohol, includ-
ing the longest bar in the world (241 feet), in the Mexicali Club. The
minute San Diego outlawed cabaret dancing, Tijuana bristled with high-
kicking girls. When boxing was illegal in California, you could find an
abundance of the sweet science in Tijuana. You could get married any-
where, anytime; enterprising matchmakers tailed American couples down
SEABISCUIT ■ 13
the streets, offering to get them hitched for cheap. Those who declined
were offered quickie divorces, while single men were steered into one of
the many brothels, a cottage industry in Tijuana. The town was wide open
every hour, every day. In 1929, when the Depression came and poverty
began to replace temperance as the narrower of American life, Tijuanan
businesses kept prices at bargain-basement levels, so that northern tourists
purring past the clapboard shops along the Avenida Revolución could af-
ford to live high in every conceivable way: lobster dinners, fine spirits,
salon services, dancing. The place had a state-of-nature feel to it; former
jockey Wad Studley recalls seeing a truckload of Mexican soldiers pull up
in the middle of the desert, force a rape suspect out onto the sand at bayo-
net point, send him running, then use him for target practice.
Tijuana’s greatest tourist attraction was its racetrack, which benefited
from the hard times afflicting the racing industry in the United States.
Thoroughbred racing had a lengthy and celebrated history in America,
but at the height of the temperance and antigambling reform movements in
the first decade of the century, a series of race-fixing scandals involving
bookmakers inspired a wave of legislation outlawing wagering. The result
was catastrophic for racing. At the turn of the century, well over three hun-
dred tracks had been operating nationwide; by 1908, only twenty-five re-
mained, and the attrition continued until World War I. In California, the
center of top-class western racing, the only track that survived the ban was
San Francisco’s Tanforan, which barely scraped by. Many horsemen were
forced to abandon the sport and sell off their farms and horses. Most of the
rest, especially in the West, retreated to a sort of racing underground, a se-
ries of leaky-roof tracks scattered through Canada and the few American
states where the sport had not been banned.
For Tijuanans, the racing ban was a godsend. In 1916, shortly after
California’s ban on wagering, they opened the Tijuana Racecourse, which
immediately became a haven for American stables and racing fans. It was a
dilapidated place—one former rider compared it to an outhouse—but like
everything else in Tijuana, it was innovative, offering the first primitive
movable starting gates and photo finishes. When a departing Hollywood
film crew forgot to pack its loudspeaker equipment, racetrackers appro-
priated the gear, fiddled with it, and soon fashioned the first race-calling
public address system. The racing was lawless and wild and the Ameri-
cans loved it.
Among the Yankees pouring down to the border was Charles Howard.
He never explained why he came. Perhaps the place freed him from a
straitjacket of grief. By some accounts, his marriage, already ailing before
Frankie’s death, was staggering, and maybe he needed to get away. Or it
could have been that all that he had worked for mattered less now. The
automobile, which had given him great wealth, had stolen something im-
measurably more important. His interest in cars, said at least one acquain-
tance, withered. Howard found himself slipping down the Road to Hell
and drifting into that exuberant, swaybacked little town. He avoided the
girls and the booze. It was the horses that captured his attention. He tum-
bled along with the racetrackers, and soon found himself buying a few
nondescript Mexican horses and traveling down to attend their races.
They were the poorest sort of runners, racing for no more than a handful
of pesos, but Howard enjoyed sitting in the stands and cheering them
home.
O n a summer day in 1929 Howard’s eldest son, Lin, invited his father
to the annual Salinas Rodeo. With Lin that day was his wife, Anita,
who had talked her older sister Marcela Zabala, a local actress, into joining
them for the outing. There in the stands, Charles Howard first set eyes on
her dark, wavy hair, straight, slender eyebrows, easy smile. Schooled in a
convent and raised on a modest horse ranch just outside of Salinas, where
her father was a lawyer, she had once been named Lettuce Queen at the an-
nual Salinas Lettuce Festival.
Charles Howard was bewitched. Not long afterward, Anita gave birth
to her first child and asked Marcela to stay with her. Marcela moved into
Lin and Anita’s home, where she and Charles saw each other daily.
Though a May-December romance must have caused a sensation,
Howard fell in love with Marcela and she with him. She was twenty-five
and the sister of his son’s wife; he was fifty-two and married. His marriage,
wounded by Frankie’s death, collapsed. In the fall of 1932, at a ceremony
at Lin’s house, Charles and Marcela were wed.
In Marcela, Howard found his perfect complement. Like him, she was
deeply empathic. Suddenly elevated into the world of the rich, she moved
with an easy, charming propriety, yet had the rare grace and aplomb to
make her frequent departures from convention seem amusing instead of
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them presented his carbine at her—
“Off, mistress; blast my heart, if it were not for your pretty face, I
would send an ounce of cold lead through you. What the devil—
haven’t we spared your father’s life, and you would have us connive
at the escape of a murderer, to the risk of our own necks!”
“Do not distress yourself about me, my sweet girl,” cried Graham
—“farewell once more!”
And she turned back weeping, while the troopers held their way
towards the western outlet of the valley.
Chapter III.
Mary was too generous to be happy in the safety of her father,
when that was bought with the life of his brave deliverer. When
Graham was taken away, she felt a pang as if he had been led to
execution. Instead, therefore, of indulging in selfish congratulation,
her whole soul was taken up in the romantic and apparently hopeless
scheme of extricating him from his danger. There was not a moment
to lose; and she asked her father if he could think of any way in
which a rescue might be attempted.
“Mary, my dear, I know of none,” was his answer. “We live far from
any house, and before assistance could be procured, they would be
miles beyond our reach.”
“Yes, father, there is a chance,” said she, with impatience. “Gallop
over to Allister Wilson’s on the other side of the hills. He is a strong
and determined man, and, as well as some of his near neighbours, is
accustomed to contest. You know he fought desperately at Drumclog;
and though he blamed you for not joining the cause, he will not be
loth to assist in this bitter extremity.”
Allan, at these words, started up as if awakened from a reverie.
“That will do, my dear bairn. I never thought of it; but your
understanding is quicker than mine. I shall get out the horse; follow
me on foot, as hard as you can.”
This was the work of a minute. The horse was brought from the
stable, and Allan lashed him to his full speed across the moor. Most
fortunately he arrived at Allister’s house as the latter was on the
point of leaving it. He carried a musket over his shoulder, and a huge
claymore hung down from a belt girded round his loins.
“You have just come in time,” said this stern son of the Covenant,
after Allan had briefly related to him what had happened. “I am on
my way to hear that precious saint, Mr Hervey, hold forth. You see I
am armed to defend myself against temporal foes, and so are many
others of my friends and brethren in God, who will be present on that
blessed occasion. Come away, Allan Hamilton, you are one of the
timid and faint-hearted flock of Jacob, but we will aid you as you
wish, and peradventure save the young man who has done you such a
good turn.”
They went on swiftly to a retired spot at the distance of half a mile;
it was a small glen nearly surrounded with rocks. There they beheld
the Reverend Mr Hervey standing upon a mound of earth, and
preaching to a congregation, the greater part of the males of which
were armed with muskets, swords, or pikes; they formed, as it were,
the outworks of the assembly,—the women, old men, and children
being placed in the centre. These were a few of the devoted
Christians who, from the rocks and caves of their native land, sent up
their fearless voices to heaven—who, disowning the spiritual
authority of a tyrannic government, thought it nowise unbecoming or
treasonable to oppose the strong arm of lawless power with its own
weapons; and who finally triumphed in the glorious contest,
establishing that pure religion, for which posterity has proved, alas,
too ungrateful!
In the pressing urgency of the case, Allister did not scruple to go
up to the minister, in the midst of his discourse. Such interruptions
indeed were common in these distracted times, when it was
necessary to skulk from place to place, and perform divine worship
as if it was an act of treason against the state. Mr Hervey made
known to his flock in a few words what had been communicated to
him, taking care to applaud highly the scheme proposed by Wilson.
There was no time to be lost, and under the guidance of Allister the
whole of the assemblage hurried to a gorge of the mountains through
which the troopers must necessarily pass. As the route of the latter
was circuitous, time was allowed to this sagacious leader to arrange
his forces. This he did by placing all the armed men—about twenty-
five in number—in two lines across the pass. Those who were not
armed, together with the women and children, were sent to the rear.
When, therefore, the soldiers came up, they found to their surprise a
formidable body ready to dispute the passage.
“What means this interruption?” said Ross, who acted the part of
spokesman to the rest. Whereupon Mr Hervey advanced in front
—“Release,” said he, “that young man whom ye have in bonds.”
“Release him!” replied Ross. “Would you have us release a
murderer? Are you aware that he has shot his officer?”
“I am aware of it,” Mr Hervey answered, “and I blame him not for
the deed. Stand forth, Allan Hamilton, and say if that is the soldier
who saved your life; and you, Mary Hamilton, stand forth likewise.”
Both, to the astonishment of the soldiers, came in front of the
crowd. “That,” said Allan, “is the man, and may God bless him for his
humanity.”—“It is the same,” cried his daughter; “I saw him with
these eyes shoot the cruel Clobberton. On my knees I begged him to
sue for mercy, and his kind heart had pity upon me, and saved my
father.”
“Soldiers,” said Mr Hervey, “I have nothing more to say to you.
That young man has slain your captain, but he has done no murder.
His deed was justifiable: yea, it was praiseworthy, in so far as it saved
an upright man, and rid the earth of a cruel persecutor. Deliver him
up, and go away in peace, or peradventure ye may fare ill among
these armed men who stand before you.”
The troopers consulted together for a short time, till, seeing that
resistance would be utter madness against such odds, they
reluctantly let go their prisoner. The first person who came up to him
was Mary Hamilton. She loosened the cords that tied him, and
presented him with conscious pride to those of her own sex who were
assembled round.
“Good bye, Graham,” cried Ross, with a sneer;—“you have bit us
once, but it will puzzle you to do so again. We shall soon ‘harry’ you
and your puritanical friends from your strongholds. An ell of strong
hemp is in readiness for you at the Grassmarket of Edinburgh. Take
my defiance for a knave, as you are,” added he, with an imprecation.
He had scarcely pronounced the last sentence when Graham
unsheathed the weapon which hung at his side, sprang from the
middle of the crowd, and stood before his defier. “Ross, you have
challenged me, and you shall abide it—draw!” Here there was an
instantaneous movement among the Covenanters, who rushed in
between the two fierce soldiers, who stood with their naked weapons,
their eyes glancing fire at each other. Mary Hamilton screamed aloud
with terror, and cries of “separate them!” were heard from all the
women. Mr Hervey came forward and entreated them to put up their
swords, and he was seconded by most of the old men; but all
entreaties were in vain. They stood fronting each other, and only
waiting for free ground to commence their desperate game.
“Let me alone,” said Graham, furiously, to some who were
attempting to draw him back; “am I to be bearded to my teeth by that
swaggering ruffian?”
“Come on, my sweet cock of the Covenant,” cries Ross, with the
most insulting derision, “you or any one of your canting crew—or a
dozen of you, one after the other.”
“Let Graham go,” was heard from the deep stern voice of Allister
Wilson; “let him go, or I will meet that man with my own weapon. Mr
Hervey, your advice is dear to us all, and well do we know that the
blood of God’s creatures must not be shed in vain; but has not that
man of blood openly defied us, and shall we hinder our champion
from going forward to meet him? No; let them join in combat and try
which is the better cause. If the challenger overcomes, we shall do
him no harm, but let him depart in peace: if he be overcome, let him
rue the consequences of his insolence.”
This proposition, though violently opposed by the women and the
aged part of the crowd, met the entire approbation of the young men.
Each felt himself personally insulted, and allowed, for a time, the
turbulent passions of his nature to get the better of every milder
feeling. A space of ground was immediately cleared for the combat,
the friends of Ross being allowed to arrange matters as they thought
fit. They went about it with a coolness and precision which showed
that to them this sort of pastime was nothing new. “All is right—fall
on,” was their cry, and in a moment the combatants met in the area.
The three troopers looked on with characteristic sang froid, but it
was otherwise with the rest of the bystanders, who gazed upon the
scene with the most intense interest. Some of the females turned
away their eyes from it, and among them Mary Hamilton, who
almost sank to the earth, and was with difficulty supported by her
father.
The combat was desperate, for the men were of powerful strength,
and of tried courage and skill in their weapons. The blows were
parried for some time on both sides with consummate address, and
neither could be said to have the advantage. At length, after
contending fiercely, Ross exhibited signs of exhaustion—neither
guarding himself nor assaulting his opponent so vigorously as at
first. Graham, on noticing this, redoubled his efforts. He acted now
wholly on the offensive, sending blow upon blow with the rapidity of
lightning. His last and most desperate stroke was made at the head
of his enemy. The sword of the latter, which was held up in a
masterly manner to receive it, was beat down by Graham’s weapon,
which descended forcibly upon his helmet. The blow proved decisive,
and Ross fell senseless upon the ground. His conqueror immediately
wrested the weapon from him, while a shout was set up by the crowd
in token of victory. The troopers looked mortified at this result of the
duel, which was by them evidently unexpected. Their first care was to
raise up their fellow comrade. On examination, no wound was
perceived upon his head. His helmet had been penetrated by the
sword, which, however, did not go further. His own weapon had
contributed to deaden the blow, by partially arresting that of Graham
in its furious descent. It was this only which saved his life. In a few
minutes he so far recovered as to get up and look around him. The
first object which struck him was his opponent standing in the ring
wiping his forehead.
“Well, Ross,” said one of his companions, “I always took you to be
the best swordsman in the regiment; but I think you have met your
match.”
“My match? confound me!” returned the vanquished man, “I
thought I would have made minced meat of him. There, for three
years, have I had the character of being one of the best men in the
army at my weapon, and here is all this good name taken out of me
in a trice. How mortifying—and to lose my good sword too!”
“Here is your sword, Ross, and keep it,” said Graham. “You have
behaved like a brave man; and I honour such a fellow, whether he be
my friend or foe. Only don’t go on with your insolent bragging—that
is all the advice I have to give you; nor call any man a knave till you
have good proof that he is so.”
“Well, well, Graham,” answered the other, “I retract what I said; I
have a better opinion of you than I had ten minutes ago. Take care of
old Dalzell—his “lambs” will be after you, and you had better keep
out of the way. Take this advice in return for my weapon which you
have given me back. It would, after all, be a pity to tuck up such a
pretty fellow as you are; although I would care very little to see your
long-faced acquaintances there dangling by their necks. Give us your
hand for old fellowship, and shift your quarters as soon as you
choose. Good bye.” So saying, he and his three comrades departed.
After these doings, it was considered imprudent for the principal
actors to remain longer in this quarter. Mr Hervey retired about
twenty miles to the northward, in company with Allan Hamilton and
his daughter, and Allister Wilson. Graham went by a circuitous route
to Argyleshire, where he secreted himself so judiciously, that though
the agents of government got information of his being in that
country, they could never manage to lay hand upon him. These steps
were prudent in all parties; for the very day after the rescue, a strong
body of dragoons was sent to the Lowthers, to apprehend the above
named persons. They behaved with great cruelty, burning the
cottages of numbers of the inhabitants, and destroying their cattle.
They searched Allan Hamilton’s house, took from it everything that
could be easily carried away, and such of his cattle as were found on
the premises. Among other things, they carried off the body of the
sanguinary Clobberton, which they found on the spot where it had
been left, and interred it in Lanark churchyard, with military
honours. None of the individuals, however, whom they sought for
were found.
For a short time after this, the persecution raged with great
violence in the south of Lanarkshire; but happier days were
beginning to dawn; and the arrival of King William, and the
dethronement of the bigoted James, put an end to such scenes of
cruelty. When these events occurred, the persecuted came forth from
their hiding-places. Mr Hervey, among others, returned to the
Lowthers, and enjoyed many happy days in this seat of his ministry
and trials. Allan and his daughter were among the first to make their
appearance. Their house soon recovered its former comfort; and in
the course of time every worldly concern went well with them. Mary,
however, for a month or more after their return, did not feel entirely
satisfied. She was duller than was her wont, and neither she nor her
father could give any explanation why it should be so. At this time a
tall young man paid them a visit, and, strange to say, she became
perfectly happy. This visitor was no other than the wild fighting
fellow Graham,—now perfectly reformed from his former evil
courses, by separation from his profligate companions, and by the
better company and principles with which his late troubles had
brought him acquainted.
A few words more will end our story. This bold trooper and the
beautiful daughter of Allan Hamilton were seen five weeks thereafter
going to church as man and wife. It was allowed that they were the
handsomest couple ever seen in the Lowthers. Graham proved a kind
husband; and it is hardly necessary to say that Mary was a most
affectionate and exemplary wife. Allan Hamilton attained a happy
old age, and saw his grandchildren ripening into fair promise around
him. His daughter, many years after his death, used to repeat to
them the story of his danger and escape, which we have here
imperfectly related. The tale is not fictitious. It is handed down in
tradition over the upper and middle wards of Lanarkshire, and with a
consistency which leaves no doubt of its truth.
THE POOR SCHOLAR.
By Professor Wilson.
The vernal weather, that had come so early in the year as to induce
a fear that it would not be lasting, seemed, contrary to that
foreboding of change, to become every day more mild and genial,
and the spirit of beauty, that had at first ventured out over the bosom
of the earth with timid footsteps, was now blending itself more boldly
with the deep verdure of the ground, and the life of the budding
trees. Something in the air, and in the great wide blue bending arch
of the unclouded sky, called upon the heart to come forth from the
seclusion of parlour or study, and partake of the cheerfulness of
nature.
We had made some short excursions together up the lonely glens,
and over the moors, and also through the more thickly inhabited
field-farms of his parish, and now the old minister proposed that we
should pay a visit to a solitary hut near the head of a dell, which,
although not very remote from the manse, we had not yet seen; and I
was anxious that we should do so, as, from his conversation, I
understood that we should see there a family—if so a widow and her
one son could be called—that would repay us by the interest we could
not fail to feel in their character, for the time and toil spent on
reaching their secluded and guarded dwelling.
“The poor widow woman,” said the minister, “who lives in the hut
called Braehead, has as noble a soul as ever tenanted a human
bosom. One earthly hope alone has she now—but I fear it never will
be fulfilled. She is the widow of a common cottar, who lived and died
in the hut which she and her son now inhabit. Her husband was a
man of little education, but intelligent, even ingenious, simple,
laborious, and pious. His duties lay all within a narrow circle, and his
temptations, it may be said, were few. Such as they were, he
discharged the one and withstood the other. Nor is there any reason
to think that, had they both been greater, he would have been found
wanting. He was contented with meal and water all his days, and so
fond of work that he seemed to love the summer chiefly for the
length of its labouring days. He had a slight genius for mechanics;
and during the long winter evenings he made many articles of
curious workmanship, the sale of which added a little to the earnings
of his severer toil. The same love of industry excited him from
morning to night; but he had also stronger, tenderer, and dearer
motives; for if his wife and their one pretty boy should outlive him,
he hoped that, though left poor, they would not be left in penury, but
enabled to lead, without any additional hardships, the usual life, at
least, of the widow and the orphans of honest hardworking men. Few
thought much about Abraham Blane while he lived, except that he
was an industrious and blameless man; but, on his death, it was felt
that there had been something far more valuable in his character;
and now, I myself, who knew him well, was pleasingly surprised to
know that he had left his widow and boy a small independence. Then
the memory of his long summer days, and long winter nights, all
ceaselessly employed in some kind of manual labour, dignified the
lowly and steadfast virtue of the unpretending and conscientious
man.
“The widow of this humble-hearted and simple-minded man,
whom we shall this forenoon visit, you will remember, perhaps,—
although then neither she nor her husband were much known in the
parish,—as the wife of the basket-maker. Her father had been a
clergyman—but his stipend was one of the smallest in Scotland, and
he died in extreme poverty. This, his only daughter, who had many
fine feelings and deep thoughts in her young innocent and simple
heart, was forced to become a menial servant in a farmhouse. There,
subduing her heart to her situation, she married that inoffensive and
good man; and all her life has been—maid, wife, and widow—the
humblest among the humble. But you shall soon have an opportunity
of seeing, what sense, what feeling, what knowledge, and what piety,
may all live together, without their owner suspecting them, in the
soul of the lonely widow of a Scottish cottar; for except that she is
pious, she thinks not that she possesses any other treasure; and even
her piety she regards, like a true Christian, as a gift bestowed.
“But well worthy of esteem, and, to speak in the language of this
world’s fancies, of admiration, as you will think this poor solitary
widow, perhaps you will think such feelings bestowed even more
deservedly on her only son. He is now a boy only of sixteen years of
age, but in my limited experience of life, never knew I such another.
From his veriest infancy he showed a singular capacity for learning;
at seven years of age he could read, write, and was even an
arithmetician. He seized upon books with the same avidity with
which children in general seize upon playthings. He soon caught
glimmerings of the meaning even of other languages; and, before he
was ten years old, there were in his mind clear dawnings of the
scholar, and indications not to be doubted of genius and intellectual
power. His father was dead—but his mother, who was no common
woman, however common her lot, saw with pure delight, and with
strong maternal pride, that God had given her an extraordinary child
to bless her solitary hut. She vowed to dedicate him to the ministry,
and that all her husband had left should be spent upon him, to the
last farthing, to qualify him to be a preacher of God’s Word. Such
ambition, if sometimes misplaced, is almost always necessarily
honourable. Here it was justified by the excelling talents of the boy—
by his zeal for knowledge, which was like a fever in his blood—and by
a childish piety, of which the simple, and eloquent, and beautiful
expression has more than once made me shed tears. But let us leave
the manse, and walk to Braehead. The sunshine is precious at this
early season; let us enjoy it while it smiles!”
We crossed a few fields—a few coppice woods—an extensive sheep-
pasture, and then found ourselves on the edge of a moorland.
Keeping the shelving heather ridge of hills above us, we gently
descended into a narrow rushy glen, without anything that could be
called a stream, but here and there crossed and intersected by
various runlets. Soon all cultivation ceased, and no houses were to be
seen. Had the glen been a long one, it would have seemed desolate,
but on turning round a little green mount that ran almost across it,
we saw at once an end to our walk, and one hut, with a peatstack
close to it, and one or two elder, or, as we call them in Scotland,
bourtrie bushes, at the low gable-end. A little smoke seemed to tinge
the air over the roof uncertainly—but except in that, there was
nothing to tell that the hut was inhabited. A few sheep lying near it,
and a single cow of the small hill-breed, seemed to appertain to the
hut, and a circular wall behind it apparently enclosed the garden. We
sat down together on one of those large mossy stones that often lie
among the smooth green pastoral hills, like the relics of some
building utterly decayed—and my venerable friend, whose solemn
voice was indeed pleasant in this quiet solitude, continued the simple
history of the poor scholar.
“At school he soon outstripped all the other boys, but no desire of
superiority over his companions seemed to actuate him—it was the
pure native love of knowledge. Gentle as a lamb, but happy as a lark,
the very wildest of them all loved Isaac Blane. He procured a Hebrew
Bible and a Greek Testament, both of which he taught himself to
read. It was more than affecting—it was sublime and awful to see the
solitary boy sitting by himself on the braes shedding tears over the
mysteries of the Christian faith. His mother’s heart burned within
her towards her son; and if it was pride, you will allow that it was
pride of a divine origin. She appeared with him in the kirk every
Sabbath, dressed not ostentatiously, but still in a way that showed
she intended him not for a life of manual labour. Perhaps, at first,
some half thought that she was too proud of him; but that was a
suggestion not to be cherished, for all acknowledged that he was sure
to prove an honour to the parish in which he was born. She often
brought him to the manse, and earth did not contain a happier
creature than she, when her boy answered all my questions, and
modestly made his own simple, yet wise remarks on the sacred
subjects gradually unfolding before his understanding and his heart.
“Before he was twelve years of age he went to college; and his
mother accompanied him to pass the winter in the city. Two small
rooms she took near the cathedral; and while he was at the classes,
or reading alone, she was not idle, but strove to make a small sum to
help to defray their winter’s expenses. To her that retired cell was a
heaven when she looked upon her pious and studious boy. His genius
was soon conspicuous; for four winters he pursued his studies in the
university, returning always in summer to this hut, the door of which
during their absence was closed. He made many friends, and
frequently during the three last summers, visitors came to pass a day
at Braehead, in a rank of life far above his own. But in Scotland,
thank God, talent and learning, and genius and virtue, when found in
the poorest hut, go not without their admiration and their reward.
Young as he is, he has had pupils of his own—his mother’s little
property has not been lessened at this hour by his education; and
besides contributing to the support of her and himself, he has
brought neater furniture into that lonely hut, and there has he a
library, limited in the number, but rich in the choice of books, such
as contain food for years of silent thought to the poor scholar—if
years indeed are to be his on earth.”
We rose to proceed onwards to the hut, across one smooth level of
greenest herbage, and up one intervening knowe, a little lower than
the mount on which it stood. Why, thought I, has the old man always
spoken of the poor scholar as if he had been speaking of one now
dead? Can it be, from the hints he has dropped, that this youth, so
richly endowed, is under the doom of death, and the fountain of all
those clear and fresh-gushing thoughts about to be sealed? I asked,
as we walked along, if Isaac Blane seemed marked out to be one of
those sweet flowers “no sooner blown than blasted,” and who perish
away like the creatures of a dream? The old man made answer that it
was even so, that he had been unable to attend college last winter,
and that it was to be feared he was now far advanced in a hopeless
decline. “Simple is he still as a very child; but with a sublime sense of
duty to God and man—of profound affection and humanity never to
be appeased towards all the brethren of our race. Each month—each
week—each day, has seemed visibly to bring him new stores of silent
feeling and thought—and even now, boy as he is, he is fit for the
ministry. But he has no hopes of living to that day—nor have I. The
deep spirit of his piety is now blended with a sure prescience of an
early death. Expect, therefore, to see him pale, emaciated, and sitting
in the hut like a beautiful and blessed ghost.”
We entered the hut, but no one was in the room. The clock ticked
solitarily, and on a table, beside a nearly extinguished peat fire, lay
the open Bible, and a small volume, which, on lifting it up, I found to
be a Greek Testament.
“They have gone out to walk, or to sit down for an hour in the
warm sunshine,” said the old man. “Let us sit down and wait their
return. It will not be long.” A long, low sigh was heard in the silence,
proceeding, as it seemed, from a small room adjoining that in which
we were sitting, and of which the door was left half open. The
minister looked into that room, and, after a long earnest gaze,
stepped softly back to me again, with a solemn face, and taking me
by the hand, whispered to me to come with him to that door, which
he gently moved. On a low bed lay the poor scholar, dressed as he
had been for the day, stretched out in a stillness too motionless and
profound for sleep, and with his fixed face up to heaven. We saw that
he was dead. His mother was kneeling, with her face on the bed, and
covered with both her hands. Then she lifted up her eyes and said, “O
merciful Redeemer, who wrought that miracle on the child of the
widow of Nain, comfort me—comfort me, in this my sore distress. I
know that my son is never to rise again until the great judgment day.
But not the less do I bless Thy holy name, for Thou didst die to save
us sinners.”
She arose from her knees, and, still blind to every other object,
went up to his breast. “I thought thee lovelier, when alive, than any
of the sons of the children of men, but that smile is beyond the power
of a mother’s heart to sustain.” And, stooping down, she kissed his
lips, and cheeks, and eyes, and forehead, with a hundred soft,
streaming, and murmuring kisses, and then stood up in her solitary
hut, alone and childless, with a long mortal sigh, in which all earthly
feelings seemed breathed out, and all earthly ties broken. Her eyes
wandered towards the door, and fixed themselves with a ghastly and
unconscious gaze for a few moments on the gray locks and withered
countenance of the holy old man, bent towards her with a pitying
and benignant air, and stooped, too, in the posture of devotion. She
soon recognised the best friend of her son, and leaving the bed on
which his body lay, she came out into the room, and said, “You have
come to me at a time when your presence was sorely needed. Had
you been here but a few minutes sooner you would have seen my
Isaac die!”
Unconsciously we were all seated; and the widow, turning
fervently to her venerated friend, said, “He was reading the Bible—he
felt faint—and said feebly, ‘Mother, attend me to my bed, and when I
lie down, put your arm over my breast and kiss me.’ I did just as he
told me; and, on wiping away a tear or two vainly shed by me on my
dear boy’s face, I saw that his eyes, though open, moved not, and that
the lids were fixed. He had gone to another world. See—sir! there is
the Bible lying open at the place he was reading—God preserve my
soul from repining!—only a few, few minutes ago.”
The minister took the Bible on his knees, and laying his right hand,
without selection, on part of one of the pages that lay open, he read
aloud the following verses:—
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
The mother’s heart seemed to be deeply blest for a while by these
words. She gave a grateful smile to the old man, and sat silent,
moving her lips. At length she again broke forth:—
“Oh! death, whatever may have been our thoughts or fears, ever
comes unexpectedly at last. My son often—often told me, that he was
dying, and I saw that it was so ever since Christmas. But how could I
prevent hope from entering my heart? His sweet happy voice—the
calmness of his prayers—his smiles that never left his face whenever
he looked or spoke to me—his studies, still pursued as anxiously as
ever—the interest he took in any little incident of our retired life—all
forced me to believe at times that he was not destined to die. But why
think on all these things now? Yes! I will always think of them, till I
join him and my husband in heaven!”
It seemed now as if the widow had only noticed me for the first
time. Her soul had been so engrossed with its passion of grief, and
with the felt sympathy and compassion of my venerable friend. She
asked me if I had known her son; and I answered, that if I had, I
could not have sat there so composedly; but that I was no stranger to
his incomparable excellence, and felt indeed for her grievous loss.
She listened to my words, but did not seem to hear them, and once
more addressed the old man.
“He suffered much sickness, my poor boy. For although it was a
consumption, that is not always an easy death. But as soon as the
sickness and the racking pain gave way to our united prayers, God
and our Saviour made us happy; and sure he spake then as never
mortal spake, kindling into a happiness that was beautiful to see,
when I beheld his face marked by dissolution, and knew, even in
those inspired moments (for I can call them nothing else), that ere
long the dust was to lie on those lips now flowing over with heavenly
music!”
We sat for some hours in the widow’s hut, and the minister several
times prayed with her, at her own request. On rising to depart, he
said that he would send up one of her dearest friends to pass the
night with her, and help her to do the last offices to her son. But she
replied that she wished to be left alone for that day and night, and
would expect her friend in the morning. We went towards the outer
door, and she, in a sort of sudden stupor, let us depart without any
farewell words, and retired into the room where her son was lying.
Casting back our eyes before our departure, we saw her steal into the
bed beside the dead body, and drawing the head gently into her
bosom, she lay down with him in her arms, and as if they had in that
manner fallen asleep.
THE CRUSHED BONNET.
Towards the close of a beautiful autumnal day in 18—, when

pacing slowly on my way, and in a contemplative mood admiring the
delightful scenery between Blair Athole and Dunkeld, on my return
from a survey of the celebrated pass of Killiecrankie, and other places
rendered famous in Scottish story, I was accosted by a female, little
past the prime of life, but with two children of unequal age walking
by her side, and a younger slung upon her back. The salutation was
of the supplicatory kind, and while the tones were almost perfectly
English, the pronunciation of the words was often highly Scottish.
The words, a “sodger’s widow”—“three helpless bairns”—and
“Waterloo,” broke my meditations with the force of an enchantment,
excited my sympathy, and made me draw my purse. While in the act
of tendering a piece of money—a cheap and easy mode of procuring
the luxury of doing good—I thought the countenance, though
browned and weather-beaten, one which I before had seen, without
exactly recollecting when or where. My curiosity thus raised, many
interrogatives and answers speedily followed, when at last I
discovered that there stood before me Jeanie Strathavon, once the
beauty and the pride of my own native village. Ten long and
troublous years had passed away since Jeanie left the neighbourhood
in which she was born to follow the spirit-stirring drum; and where
she had gone, or how she had afterwards fared, many enquired,
though but few could tell. The incident which led to all her
subsequent toil and suffering seemed but trivial at the time, yet, like
many other trivial occurrences, became to her one fraught with
mighty consequences.
She was an only daughter, her father was an honest labourer, and
though not nursed in the bosom of affluence, she hardly knew what it
was to have a wish ungratified. She possessed mental vivacity, and
personal attractions, rarely exhibited, especially at the present day,
by persons in her humble sphere of life. Though she never could
boast what might properly be called education, yet great care had
been taken to render her modest, affectionate, and pious. Her
parents, now in the decline of life, looked upon her as their only
solace. She had been from her very birth the idol of their hearts; and
as there was no sunshine in their days but when she was healthy and
happy, so their prospects were never clouded but when she was the
reverse. Always the favourite of one sex, and the envy of another,
when not yet out of her teens, she was importuned by the addresses
of many both of her own rank and of a rank above her own, to change
her mode of life. The attentions of the latter, in obedience to the
suggestions of her affectionate but simple hearted parents, she
always discouraged, for they never would allow themselves to think
that “folk wi’ siller would be looking after their bairn for ony gude
end.” Among those of her own station, she could hardly be said to
have yet shown a decided preference to any one, though the glances
which she cast at Henry Williams, when passing through the
kirkyard on Sundays, seemed to every one to say where, if she had
her own unbiassed will, her choice would light. Still she had never
thought seriously upon the time when, nor the person for whom, she
would leave her fond and doting parents. Chance or accident,
however, in these matters, often outruns the speed of deliberate
choice; at least such was the case with poor Jeanie.
Decked out one Sabbath morning in her best, to go to what Burns
calls a “Holy Fair,” in the neighbouring parish, though viewed in a far
different light by her, Jeanie had on her brawest and her best; and
among other things, a fine new bonnet, which excited the gossip and
the gaze of all the lasses in the village. Having sat for an hour or two
at the tent, listening earnestly and devoutly to a discourse which
formed a complete body of divinity, she, with many others, was at
length obliged to take refuge in the church, to shun a heavy summer
shower, which unexpectedly arrested the out-door devotions. Here,
whether wearied with the long walk she had in the morning, or
overpowered with the heat and suffocation consequent upon such a
crowd, she began to feel a serious oppression of sickness, and before
she could effect her escape she entirely fainted away, requiring to be
carried out in a state of complete insensibility.
It was long before she came to herself; and when she did, she
found that the rough hands of those who had caught her when
falling, and borne her through the crowd to the open air, had, amidst
the anxiety for her recovery, treated her finery with but very little
ceremony. Among other instances of this kind, she found that her
bonnet had been hastily torn from her head, thrown carelessly aside,
and, being accidentally trod upon, had been so crushed, as to render
it perfectly useless. The grief which this caused made her forget the
occasion which produced such disaster; and adjusting herself as well
as she could, she did not wait the conclusion of the solemn service,
but sought her father’s cottage amidst much sorrow and confusion.
When she reached home, she found her parents engaged in
devotional reading, their usual mode of spending the Sabbath
evenings. As it was not altogether with their consent that she had not
accompanied them that day to their usual place of being instructed in
divine things, the plight in which she returned to them excited,
especially on the mother’s part, a hasty burst of displeasure, if not of
anger; and the calm improving peace of the evening was entirely
broken. Sacred as to them the day appeared, they could not restrain
inquiry as to the cause of her altered appearance, and maternal
anxiety gave birth to suspicions which poor Jeanie’s known veracity
and simple unaffected narrative could not altogether repress. Thus,
for the first time in her life, had Jeanie excited the frown of her
parents, and every reproving look and word was as a dagger to her
heart.
Night came, and she retired to rest, but her innocent breast was
too much agitated to allow her eyes to close in sleep; and the return
of morning only brought with it an additional burden to her heart, by
a renewed discussion of the events of the previous day. This was
more than she was able to stand, and she took the first opportunity
to escape from that roof where, till now, she had never known aught
but delight, to go to pour her complaint into the ear of one who
seemed to love her almost to distraction,—her youthful admirer,
Henry Williams. Their interview, though not long, terminated in the
proposal on his part to relieve her from her embarrassed situation by
forthwith making her his own. Whether this was what she desired, in
having recourse to such an adviser, cannot be known, but, at all
events, she acceded with blamable facility to his wishes. She could
not endure the thought of being without a friend, and she knew not
that the friendship and affection of her parents had suffered no
abatement, though their great concern for her innocence and welfare
had pushed their reproofs further than they intended, or than
prudence under such circumstances would warrant.
Henry was little more than her own age, of but moderate capacity,
handsome in person, and ill provided with the means of making
matrimony a state of enjoyment; and too much addicted to the
frivolities of his years to be fitted for the serious business of being the
head of a family. Youth and inexperience seldom consider
consequences, and the desire of the one to receive, and of the other
to afford relief, under existing circumstances, made them resolve
neither to ask parental consent to their purpose, nor wait the
ordinary steps prescribed by the Church. The connection was
therefore no less irregular than it was precipitate, and Jeanie never
so much as sought to see her father’s house till the solemn knot was
tied.
In her absence many inquiries were made respecting her by the
villagers, who had witnessed or heard of what had happened to her
on the previous day. Her truth and innocence being thus put beyond
the shadow of a doubt, consternation at the long absence of their
child, and compunction for the severity of their reproofs, drove the
unhappy parents almost frantic. When the news of the re-appearance
of their daughter dispelled their direful apprehensions as to her
safety, though they felt a momentary gleam of joy, yet they
experienced nothing like heartfelt satisfaction.
Jeanie made as sweet and loving a wife as she had been a
daughter; but the cares of providing for more than himself soon
made Henry regret his rashness, and the prospect of these cares
speedily increasing made him more and more dissatisfied with his
new state of life. All Jeanie’s care and anxiety to soothe and please
him were unavailing. It is not in the power of beauty, youth, and
innocence, to check and control the sallies of ignorance and caprice.
Chagrined because his youthful wife had not prepared his morning
meal to his liking, on a day when he was to visit a neighbouring city
for some trifling purpose, he determined to free himself from the
yoke into which he had so heedlessly run, and returned home on the
evening of the following day somewhat altered in dress and

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1. The Day of the Horse Is Past 3

7. Learn Your Horse 99

20. “All Four of His Legs Are Broken” 281

I n 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year’s

storms and murderous heat to catch a glimpse of his private eighty-foot

military-school horses had taught him to carry his six-foot-one-inch frame

F ew men have demonstrated a better understanding of the importance

O n the weekend of May 8 and 9, 1926, Charles Howard took Fannie

Towards the close of a beautiful autumnal day in 18—, when

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