at top speed. Looking Good looked good around the first turn.
"Yay, yay, yay!" the girl yelled, jumping up and down as the desire
of her heart moved forward. "I'm winning! I'm winning!"
"Patience, my child," said her father. "In horse racing, unlike in
life, we look only at the finish, not at the progress."
"I sure hope that's true," the boy said, "because Sure Win is
running fifth."
"Yes, my son," replied his father, trying to soften an inevitable
blow, "although you know you cannot gamble and be sure at the
same time."
At length the horses came into the final stretch, and, except for
King Alphonso, who trailed rather substantially, there were only a
few lengths between the leader and the trailing horse. But in that
final, all-consuming, frenzied gallop, where mere wish and common
effort give way to inner strength and spiritual power, the spaces
increased, so that finally the children, with their feelings crushed
by the surprise of unexpected failure and by the dismay of dashed
hope, watched the horses run across the finish line in this order:
1. Outside Chance; 2. Also Ran; 3. Dotty's Trotter; 4. Sure Win; 5.
High Risk; 6. Looking Good; 7. King Alphonso.
While the girl burst into unrestrained sobbing, the boy, feeling the
full difficulty of the conflict between youth and manhood, choked
his tears back, and knowing his father to be a philosophical type,
tried to see the metaphorical application of this event. "This race
is an allegory, isn't it, Father?" he asked, "where we learn that to
succeed we must avoid what appears to be a 'Sure Win' and apply
ourselves instead to the 'Outside Chance.'"
"No, my boy," the man answered. "The lesson is that we should not
pay attention to names and appearances, but that we should penetrate
beneath the surfaces of things; that we must consider real
abilities, evaluate past records, and trust our judgment to bring us
to a knowledge of the truth. Appearances and labels are often false
and seldom accurately reflect inner realities. We must not let our
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