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SHOWMAN
Or, if you want more proof of what human beings are capable of, take old Dan O'Leary, the walking wonder. Dan covered 250,000 racing miles in his lifetime. At sixty-four he was still hearty enough to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, getting up and doing another mile every hour and then going back to sleep. And he died, prematurely burned out, I suppose, just a month shy of ninety-one.
But the humane societies and the politicians kept right on petitioning, until the New York legislature passed laws prohibiting both human beings and animals from participating in any kind of contest for more than twelve hours at a stretch. The animals came in through such popular stunts as a man racing a horse for six days— the man usually winning. I've never been able to understand why Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, ever signed that bill, since he was both intelligent and a lover of sport. But there it was— and the kick immediately went out of six-day racing. It still goes on, of course, in a watered-down form, and is very popular in New York and some other large cities. But, try as I can, I can't fathom that popularity. And I should be able to understand it, if anybody can, since I was the fellow who, trying to salvage something out of the wreck, invented this new type of race— twoman teams, with one fellow spelling the other to keep within the twelve-hour law.
The modern six-day race is about as much like the old bottled-in-bond variety as my acting is like Edwin
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