me upset. I think about it at night. Here it is.

At Saratoga we laid up nights in the hay in the shed Bildad had showed
us and ate with the niggers early and at night when the race people had
all gone away. The men from home stayed mostly in the grandstand and
betting field, and didn't come out around the places where the horses
are kept except to the paddocks just before a race when the horses are
saddled. At Saratoga they don't have paddocks under an open shed as at
Lexington and Churchill Downs and other tracks down in our country, but
saddle the horses right out in an open place under trees on a lawn as
smooth and nice as Banker Bohon's front yard here in Beckersville. It's
lovely. The horses are sweaty and nervous and shine and the men come
out and smoke cigars and look at them and the trainers are there and
the owners, and your heart thumps so you can hardly breathe.

Then the bugle blows for post and the boys that ride come running out
with their silk clothes on and you run to get a place by the fence with
the niggers.

I always am wanting to be a trainer or owner, and at the risk of being
seen and caught and sent home I went to the paddocks before every race.
The other boys didn't but I did.

We got to Saratoga on a Friday and on Wednesday the next week the big
Mullford Handicap was to be run. Middlestride was in it and Sunstreak.
The weather was fine and the track fast. I couldn't sleep the night
before.

What had happened was that both these horses are the kind it makes my
throat hurt to see. Middlestride is long and looks awkward and is a