_Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is Liable to
Occasionally Slip a Cog._
"Yes, siree," said the man with the ravelled cigar and the granulated
eyelids who swung precariously from a strap in a car of a returning
Sheepshead Bay train the other evening, "it certainly is funny about
these here hunches that women have, ain't it?"
"No," said the two seated men he was addressing.
"Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into their heads," went
on the man with the ravelled cigar, ignoring the lack of encouragement
extended to him. "And when it comes to picking out good things on a
race-track, picking 'em out just on hunch, ain't they wonders, hey?"
"Nope," said the two men at whom he was directing his conversation.
"It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band how they can stick a
pin in a program with their eyes shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that
wins a-blinking," continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing
two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar. "Their system
beats the dope and the handicapping all to shucks, don't it?"
"Nix," replied the two men in the seat.
"Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch as I did out at
Morris Park 'bout six or seven years ago," went on the man with the
eccentric cigar. "Told my wife one night during the fall meeting at the
park that I was going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I
knew had told me about a good thing that was going to happen--he'd got
it from a trainer to whom he'd sold a pair of shoes--and I was going
after some of it.
"'Theophilus Nextdoor,' says she to me, 'how dare you deliberately tell
me that you are going to gamble your money away, when I haven't a rag to
my back and the coal not yet put in!'
"'Can't help it, Clarissa,' says I, 'I've just naturally got to invest
$50 on this good thing. I know it ain't right, but I've got to do it,
anyhow.'
"Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I tried to square it up
with her the next morning, and at the breakfast table I read her the
names of the horses that were going to run in the race in which I had
the good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came to the name of a
horse called Jodan, she dropped her coffee cup with a clatter and stared
at me.
"'Jodan,' said she. Isn't that short for Joseph Daniel?'
"'Yes'm, I guess so,' I said, not knowing whether it was or not, but
anxious to stroke her the right way.
"'Is that the horse you are going to invest your money on?' she asked
me, breathlessly.
"'No, it's another one,' said I.
"'Well, you might just as well stay home, then,' said she, positively.
'You'll lose your money. Jodan will win. I dreamt all night last night
of my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a
little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph Daniel, as it
must be, then Jodan will win.'
"'But that's plain superstition, and races ain't won that way,' I said
to her.
"'I don't care one bit, so I don't,' she said to me. 'You will simply be
throwing your money away, and I need so many things, if you invest it on
any other horse than Jodan.'
"I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told me that her lost
Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had once won a full-rigged ship race from
Shanghai to Boston, and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than
one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy
couldn't lose. I told her that, while I didn't know anything about this
Jodan horse, I didn't think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk
friend had given me, but she wouldn't listen to me. The last thing she
said to me before I left the house was:
"'If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, disgraceful gambler, you
play Jodan. You'll be sorry if you don't.'
"Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads, women, ain't they?"
"No," said the two men in the seat near the strap-clutching man with the
ravelled cigar.
"Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife's queer hunch on that
Jodan horse on my way out to the track, and the more I thought about it
the weaker I became on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given
me.
"'Women have got something away ahead of sense or reason,' says I to
myself on the train on the way out, 'and I sure would feel almighty
cheap and no-account if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle
Joseph Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would. I've got a
good mind to put a little money on that Jodan horse anyhow, derned if I
haven't.'
"I was still undecided about it when I got out to the track. That's the
edge the bookmakers have got, ain't it--the people that have real good
things and then wabble when it comes to sticking to them?"
"Nope," said the two men in the seat.
"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that race in which I had
the good thing, blamed if Jodan wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good
thing horse was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking at
the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, and I had the
dingedest time making up my mind what I was going to do that you ever
heard of in your life.
"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that Jodan horse wins at
100 to 1 without my playing him, I'll never hear the last of it as
long's I'm on top of the ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and
night, that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I didn't have
enough gumption to take it. And if the good thing my shoe-clerk friend
gave me wins at 5 to 1, I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a
chance to pick up $250 if I don't play it.'
"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more room to make up my
mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly and dived into the betting ring.
"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little gamble myself,
and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm going to play that good thing my
shoe-clerk friend gave me, and nothing else.'
"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a $250 to $50 ticket on
my good thing."
Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily and looked
genuinely distressed.
"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause, "how these
things happen?"
The two men in the seat to whom he had been addressing his conversation
exhibited a certain suppressed interest as to the outcome.
"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to 1?" said one of them
finally, with a grin that clearly indicated his belief that he had the
result discounted.
The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit the same for the
eighteenth time.
"Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in!" he said, puffing away
without removing his eyes from the match. "My good thing spread-eagled
'em from the jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was last.
It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain't it?"
"Blamed if it ain't," said one of the men in the seat.
"I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife that night and told
her it was a fair replica of her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and
she told me that she just wouldn't believe that Jodan hadn't won until
she saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She caved, though,
when I uncovered the $250 and told her that she couldn't get that
cerise-silk-lined tailor-made dress quick enough to suit me, and she
said that she might have known that no horse named after her Uncle
Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck than to go and get
himself lost at sea, could win anything.
"Well, a month or so after that I went down to Washington on a little
matter of business, and took my wife along with me. There was horse
racing going on near Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph,
across the Potomac in Virginia.
"'Clarissa,' said I to my wife one morning, after I'd got all through
with my business in Washington and was ready to come back to New York,
'I think we'd better stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph.
A man that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave me a good
thing last night, and I think I ought to see to it. It's going to come
off to-day.'
"Of course she told me again that I was going to rack and ruin, and
never would make anything of myself, but I told her that I just
naturally had to go over to St. Asaph that day and play Jodan.
"'Jodan!' she almost screamed at me. 'Theophilus Nextdoor, how can you
have the hardihood to stand there and tell me that you are going to
waste your money on that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in
need of new fall outfits?'
"I told her that I'd see to the fall outfits, but that I sure couldn't
get away from that Jodan good thing.
"'Why,' I said, don't you remember how wild you were about this same
Jodan horse only a little more than a month ago?'
"'I just don't care one bit if I was,' she replied. 'I know and you know
that any horse named after my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't
have any more luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win,
and I should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand there and
tell me to my face,' etc., etc.
"Well, she wouldn't go along with me to the track over at St. Asaph
across the Potomac, and so I went alone. The man I had met in the
shooting gallery had told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I
couldn't fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found that my
wife was so opposed to Jodan's chances was more than ever determined to
play him, for I'd learned something about the nature of the feminine
hunch, don't you see?
"It like to've carried me off my feet when I saw the price on the
blackboards against Jodan. Jodan was quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite
was at 3 to 5 on, and all of 'em, the whole fourteen in the race, were
at shorter prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had intended
playing on Jodan, thinking that he'd be about 10 to 1 or something like
that, and I just thought and thought and thought over the thing.
"'By jimminy!' said I finally, after standing over in a corner alone for
a while, thinking, 'my wife may be right about Jodan, and all that, but
I came over here to play Jodan, and I'm going to play him or just bust,
win or lose!'
"Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to $10 ticket on Jodan to
win. 'Take that hay out of your hair, pal,' the bookmaker said to me
when I passed my money over--and went up to the stand to see the race,
thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take a chance on
playing against the feminine hunch.
"Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out of the clouds
in the stretch, and won the derned old race on the wire by a nose from
the favorite, and when I hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my
wife the way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was sure a
caution.
"The feminine hunch," concluded the man with the ravelled cigar and the
granulated eyelids, "is all right when you copper it, but it won't do to
play it open. Am I right?"
"No," said the two men in the seat, and then the rush to get off the
train began.