FATHER BILL'S LEG.

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 275, 7 December 1894, Page 9

FATHER BILL'S LEG.

Many are the good stories told about ‘ Father Bill’ Daly, the veteran turfman, but the following, told by a well-known horseman to a newspaper man, is new to many : ‘ Old Bill was training a horse for an underdone Anglo-maniac,’ the story goes, ‘ and as the horse had bad legs it was necessary to keep him standing in a tub of hot water for an hour in the morning to get the inflammation out. The dude came along one day just as Daly had put the horse’s forward legs in the hot water, and pulling ofE his gloves he stuck his fingers in the water and pull d them out blistered, ‘Mr Daly ! Mr Daly ! ’ he yelled ; ‘ you will scald this horse to deaths It’s cruelty—gross cruelty —to subject a horse to such tortnre, and I want you to understand, Mr Daly, that I think you just horrid to do sueh a thing.’ ‘ Father Bill sized him up very slowly, and said : ‘ Young man, you are full of prunes. The water is not too hot. I’ll bet 20 dol. that I can hold my foot in it for five minutes without a murmur.’ ‘ The dude skinned a twenty oil his roll and iaid it on the straw, and Father Bill put a double eagle on it to keep it down, and stuck his artificial leg in the tub. At the end of five minutes the young man walked away disgusted, and as Daly folded up the Bill and returned the double eagle to its place in his purse, a little coloured boy who had been on the verge of an explosion while the bet was being decided, said : ‘ For de Lord’s sake, Mas Daly, why didn’t you bet more than 20 dollars when you knowed you had a dead sure tuing.’ * ’Twarnt no dead cinch,’ says Father Bill ‘ and twenty is all I’ll bet on my memory —its getting so uncertain of |late years. S’posin’ I’d forgotten and stuck the wrong foot in the tub.’