Excerpt from The American Legion Monthly, Vol. 11: August, 1931 OR a number of years Uncle Ben Bannister had not been very lucky with his horses, nor was he in ignorance as to the reason. He lacked outstanding sires at his breeding farm. The two stallions he owned were royally bred and, as two - year-olds. Had showed great promise. As three year - olds each had won a stake event; then one had fallen and injured its shoulder very badly, while the other had been kicked on the knee by an other horse at the starting gate. As a result both had been retired to the stud, where Uncle Ben hoped for great results from their get. But he had been disappointed. Three crops of their best had been sent to the race course, where not one had proved a sensation, although as selling-platers and sprinters who could win handily in their own set Uncle Ben had been enabled to dispose of them at a good price. But the knowledge that none of them would ever shatter a track record in a long race branded their sires as failures; consequently Uncle Ben was receiving mediocre prices in his annual auction sale of yearlings and slowly there had been forced upon him the conviction that he could not afford to breed horses and sell them for from five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars. His overhead was much too high to permit that, and' he already owed considerable money. The trouble with Uncle Ben, too, was that he was old-fash ioned. Primarily a breeder, victory and not purses challenged his attention. His idea of a happy life was to breed great horses. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.