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TALES OF THE DERBY
Some of the Winners That Were
Not Liked as Youngsters.
BOUGHT FOR A MERE TRIFLE.
Little Wonder, Who Carried Off the
Blug; Ribbon In 1840, Cost His Own¬
er Only $325—The Successes of Vol
tigeur and Thormanby.
Stories of Derby winners having
been sold as youngsters for exceed¬
ingly small sums are fairly numerous,
and without going too far back into
the recesses of the past at least two
Instances can be cited of animals des¬
tined ultimately to win the “blue rib¬
bon of the turf’ which -as yearlings
no one thought good enough to buy.
Voltigeur was one of these, and the
other was Thorinanby.
Voltigeur was bred by Robert Ste¬
phenson in 1847 and as a yearling was
sent up to be sold at the Doncaster
sales, a reserve price of $1,750 being
placed on him. Not a man was found
to bid that much for him; consequently
he was withdrawn.
In all probability he would have re¬
mained unsold had not Williamson, a
relative by marriage of Lord Zetland,
seen him and, having taken a fancy to
him, finally persuaded his lordship to
buy him.
His judgment was triumphantly vin¬
dicated, for not only did Voltigeur win
the Derby and St. Leger. but he suc¬
ceeded in establishing a line of thor¬
oughbreds which is at present domi¬
nant on the English turf and likely to
remain so for some time to come.
Thormanby, t^ Vwas sent up to be
disposed at tbV'Doncaster and, like
Voltigeur. did not reach a nominal re¬
serve. Desirous of getting rid of him
however, Plummer, his breeder, re¬
quested his famous trainer, Matt Daw
sou, to come and have a thorough look
at him.
This Dawson did and, perceiving at
a glance good points about him. which
no^ one else apparently had noticed,
bought him for Merry, his patron
Strange enough, Dawson gave the
same figure for Thormanby as that
paid for Voltigeur.
As a two-year-old Thormanby ran
fourteen times and out of this number
scored nine wins, and in the Derby of
the following year he beat a field of
thirty. It was said that the race net¬
ted Merry the nice sum of $200,000.
The cheapest horse that ever won
the Derby was Little Wonder, which
was successful in 1840, for he cost his
Ameager sum of,
THE PELHAM JOURNAL, FRIDAY,NOV. 20, 1908
nmisoir a better horse than ever, not
only winning the Ascot gold cup again,
but also the Manchester cup with the
almost impossible burden, one would
think, of 138 pounds.
It has been calculated that altogeth¬
er Isonomy won for his owner up¬
ward of $500,000 in stakes and bets,
which for an $1,800 Investment was a
colossal profit.—Brooklyn Eagle.
If you will not take pains, pains will
take you.—tVhately.
LEGAL WORD SPECIALISTS.
Have to Know Exact Shade of Mean¬
ing In Words and Phrases.
“Some people seem to think that an
important legal document can be
drawn up by a lawyer in the time ii
takes his client to smoke a cigar,” re¬
marked a gray haired law clerk the
other day. “It takes time and the
most scrupulous care to get things
just right If lawyers were not care¬
ful the Lord only knows where the
clients would land.
“Why, I know a man in one of the
great law offices who is a specialist in
the exact shade of meaning of each
word or phrase used in a legal docu
ment. Nothing goes out of that office 1
without being submitted first to him
to pass upon. Sometimes he will give
a week to the study of but one short
but very important paper, theorizing
as to the possibilities of its meaning
being construed this way and that
When he gets through with a docu
ment, however, and has submitted ev
ery word of it to the acid test there is
practically no chance of its not being
exactly right, as to its verbiage at
least. In some cases, too, it is deemed
desirable by clients to becloud the
meaning of a contract so,that there Is
a loophole for its being construed in
another way in the event of certain
contingencies occurring. That is
where the services of an expert w r ord
Juggler are indispensable.
“The biggest case that I ever heard
of in this line was w'hen one of the
great corporations wished to issue
some mortgage bonds against its prop
erty. A long contract had to be drawn,
and the wording on the back of the
bond had to be decided upon. The
matter was so important that, after
the attorneys themselves had decided
on the forms to be used, it was turned
over to two of these experts in ver
biage.
“They looked up the dictionary
meaning of practically every word
used in the two documents and made
innumerable changes and suggestions
Before the papers were finished thirty
different drafts of each of the two
documents had been made, and there
was not a word fsed in the final form
of the papers tAt had not been con-
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