HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES."

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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.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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