The most talked-of pacer in the light harness world to-day is Walter
Direct. The greatest living reinsman is Ed F. Geers, his breeder, joint
owner, trainer and driver. The object of this sketch is to tell the
story of these two--the one a horse, the other a man. For when it is
all sifted down at last, it will be found that there are many parallel
lines between a great race horse and a great driver. Each to succeed
must possess certain qualities in common which make for success.
[Illustration: ED GEERS The silent man from Tennessee.]
And first, each must be born for greatness. This may seem strange to
the uninitiated, but no man knows the truth of it more than he who has
spent his life in breeding great horses and in studying great men. It
is pedigree that counts in man and horse, and by pedigree I do not
mean blood lines only, though they count more in the life of the lower
animal, the horse, than in the life of the higher animal, the man.
Blood lines alone will not carry a man through the battle of life and
bring him out victor at the end. For there are two pedigrees in every
man which count for greatness or weakness in him. One is the pedigree
of his body, the other is the pedigree of his soul. With horse, the
pedigree of body counts most. With man, the soul. For it is that which
counts for honesty, for singleness of purpose, for truthfulness, for
silence, for thought, for right living, for that deathless spirit which
never says die. In victory, calm; in defeat, silent, but saying proudly:
“Out of the darkness which surrounds me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.”
Unfortunately for man--outside of the pygmies which some call kings--he
keeps no record of his pedigree. This is wrong, for man should at least
take as much interest in his own pedigree as he does in his horses’ or
his dogs’. And so, now and then, a master, in his craft, comes out of
the great mass of humanity, with no extended pedigree but the product
of earnest and honest and strong God-fearing fathers and mothers
of many, many centuries. The child may not know them but for one
generation, but they are all there--there in his blood and his brain
and his brawn.
And so he is born honest and earnest and strong. Such is Ed Geers--a
man who has come up from the common people. Common people of a century
ago, but O, how uncommon now in these days of trusts and steals and
grinding graft! In these days, when a millionaire is a poor man, these
days of the Equitable, these days of Rockefeller, these days of the
cursed trusts and tariff and the unspeakable graft-days when man is
nothing and money all. God of our fathers, give us back again the days
of the honest common people!
From such source comes Shakespeare, whose genius was also the product
of honesty, of brawn, of rest. Shakespeare, who has written and left
nothing else to be said! From such a source came James Knox, and Andrew
Jackson, and John Wesley, and Abraham Lincoln--these and every other
great man whose silent statues now stand as the mile-posts of human
progress, each marking an era in the epoch of the thing God made him
for.
And so, as I said, from such a source came Geers, the honest man
and the master reinsman of his age. And so, as I said, counting
the recorded pedigree, Walter Direct has it over Geers, for man,
who foolishly lets his own pedigree slip, has been very careful in
preserving that of his horse. Strange, isn’t it? And yet we are all
doing it. Ah, well, perhaps it is best for many of us that it is so.
For, as we say of the horse, in the fifth generation each one of us
would have to count for sixty-two fathers and mothers, landing us back
two hundred years ago in Scotland and Ireland, and out of that number,
in that age and country, fortunate is he who was not sent up for
poaching, for cattle-lifting, for breaking heads and, perhaps--locks!
Walter’s pedigree is blue-blooded. His owners, Chaffin & Gears, saw to
that. We can make our horse’s pedigree better than we can make our
own--for that is made for us, and often, in the making, when two warm
youngsters fall in love and decide to marry, nothing but the grace of
God, or the breaking of a midnight ladder, has saved us.
In _The Horse Review_ of 1900, when Walter Direct was then a suckling
at his mother’s heels, I wrote a description of him and predicted from
his blood lines that one day he would be the greatest of pacers. It
sounds prophetic now, but I rise hastily to disclaim it. Any horseman
posted in the pedigree and achievement of his sire and dam, and of all
his bluelines, would naturally have said the same thing. His sire,
Direct Hal, was the greatest horse of his day. His name and career are
household words in horsedom and will not be extended in this article.
But later on, in “The History of the Hals,” now running as a serial in
this Monthly, a chapter will be devoted to him in its proper place. It
is enough here to say that he was unbeaten and that his sire, Direct,
before him, was the greatest pacing stallion of his day, and that
beyond that lies the great Director, Dictator and Hambletonian 10--an
unbroken line of greatness--and in a horse greatness means gameness,
soundness, honesty, speed.
Isn’t that enough to give us a tip on the breeding of boys and girls?
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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