Peck's Sunshine. George W. Peck

his old horse was coming for all that was out. We blush for our sex. It would look nice to get in the papers that we had been racing our blue-blooded thoroughbred against a sausage butcher, wouldn't it? Our plan was formed in an instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and we took out the whip and touched our horse on a raw spot, intending to go right away from the fertilizer.

      The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, and to have his pride touched, for he snorted and let out another link. We don't know as anyone would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and costly steed went, the faster that homely and cheap butcher horse climbed. People by the hundreds all along the line were watching the race. The baskets of sausage covets were slewing around from one side of his sled to the other, and we expected every moment one of them would flop over into our cutter.

      Matters were becoming desperate, and we gave the horse one more cut and went the last block at a fearful rate, but the butcher was right beside us, so one mosquito bar would have covered us, and we came out neck and neck, the Dutchman a little ahead because his horse was unchecked, and the crowd yelled for the butcher. We turned to go up, when the butcher came up alongside just as a carriage of beautiful ladies were passing, and as they turned up their noses at his load, he said:

      “Dot vas a nice race, ain't it, Mister Beck?”

      We could have killed him in cold blood. Not that we dislike to be beaten. We have always been beaten. It isn't that. But we don't want to trot horses with no delivery wagon. We are not calculated for associating, in the horse arena, with a load of slaughter house refuse. It is asking too much. We are willing to race with Deacon Van Schaick, or brother Antisdel, or Elder Hyde, or Elder Gordon, or any of those truly good men in whom there is no guile, and in whose cutters there is no foreign matter, but as long as reason maintains her throne we shall never go upon the track again with a butcher.

      There should be a law passed making it a penal offence for a person with a delivery wagon to tackle onto a man who drives a thoroughbred. It is wrong, and will lead to trouble. We have not given up racing entirely, but hereafter we shall look the avenue over very close for butchers before we let out our four legged telescope. A butcher is just as good as anybody, understand us, but they must keep their distance. We don't want to look into, the hind end of no cutter that is filled with slaughter house ornaments, and we won't. It is not pride of birth, or anything of that kind, but such people ought to drive on Wells street, or have slower horses.