THE POINTS TO CONSIDER. 81 



most money out of them, instead of bettering, they have 

 rather injured, the average stock of the country. "Lambert," 

 one of the great New England horses, in many respects, — a 

 horse that will almost invariably transmit his outward form 

 and gait, — and both are perfect, — is absolutely being wasted, 

 so far as the perfection of New England breeding goes, by the 

 excessive use made of him, and by the lack of discrimination 

 in the dams chosen for him. The same, to some extent, was 

 true of " Fearnaught " ; the same is true of " Taggart's 

 Abdallah"; the same is true of "Tom Jefferson." As stock 

 horses they stand nowhere, compared with where they might 

 have stood, if there had been some other genius besides the 

 money-making genius presiding over their stables. 



I briefly enumerate the points to consider. The first great 

 point to be considered, is, pedigree; second, size; third, color; 

 fourth, health; fifth, temperament; sixth, speed. The order 

 in which I breed in my stable, is, first, beauty. The Ameri- 

 can temperament is a beauty-loving temperament. The 

 American eye, more and more, is getting to be an eye that 

 delights in size, in clearness of outlines, in the fulness of 

 those points that make symmetry and beauty. There is, 

 probably, outside of Italy, no country on the globe where, 

 considering the roughness of our surroundings at the start, 

 the artistic element has been more profoundly developed, than 

 it is among us. A beautiful horse will always find a buyer. 

 Therefore, breed for beauty. I say to you, that, in my judg- 

 ment, talking as a breeder with money in view, no horse 

 that is bred should be bred purely for speed. Taken as a 

 whole, breeding for speed does not pay. Twenty years ago, 

 a horse might have had a head like a tub, a gait like a camel, 

 and yet could be sold at a large price, because he had go to 

 him. He might be vicious, a cameleopard in style, and a 

 mule in gait ; yet, if he would go^ that was all the American 

 asked. We have left that period behind us. It is the period 

 through which all youth pass, — the period of push and go, 

 hurry and hurrah, — and all nations, like boys, pass through 

 it. But, by and by, there comes to the boy a time when he 

 begins to look at the fineness of things, and delights in them 

 because they are fine, until at last he comes to rejoice in 

 beauty for its own sake ; and we in America have come to 

 11 



