Readings: White
“What about the first horse I ever bet on? That was in Lexington, Kentucky, where I had gone to seek my fortune in an atmosphere favorable to the competitive spirit. (I had held three or four jobs around New York that winter, but they were prosy things at best and I felt I was losing my fine edge so I got out.) My first horse was a female named Auntie May. She was an odd-looking animal and an eleven-to-one shot, but there was this to be said for her — she came in first…. Kentucky was lovely that spring. I got twenty-two dollars from the contest and would have let it go at that if I had not chanced to fall in with some insatiable people who were on their way to Louisville to enter other contests. I went along with them. It seems I got hooked in Louisville. The Derby was a little too big for me, I guess. Easy come, easy go. But I didn’t quit. I was temporarily without money but I still had a sonnet or two up my sleeve. After the race I returned to my hotel (I didn’t say I was registered there, I said I returned to my hotel) and wrote a fourteen-line tribute to Morvich, the winning horse, and later that evening sold it to a surprised but accommodating city editor. If you will look in the Louisville Herald for Sunday, May 14, 1922, you will find my sonnet and see how a young, inexperienced man can lose a horse race but still win enough money to get out of town.” — From “The Life Triumphant,” by E.B. White
