THE ORTHODOX HEIGHT. 83 



years ago, and selected, easily, twenty daughters of the old 

 Green Mountain Morgan horse, that, at any agricultural fair 

 in the country, where horsemen were the judges, would have 

 taken the palm for beauty from any twenty out of that collec- 

 tion of thirty mares. Many of them were quite coarse-look- 

 ing ; some of them had hair on the fetlocks, much to my 

 astonishment, — so much so, that I questioned the breeding, 

 until it was clearly proved ; many had rather heavy jowls. 

 There were many things about form and motion that did not 

 affect one pleasantly, as I stood and ranged my eye over 

 them, for the ideal horse as to beauty. I do not think that 

 we need go to the thoroughbred running stock for beauty, if 

 we will be careful of our selections among our own breeders. 

 "Tom Jefferson," "Lambert," "Taggart's Abdallah," are as 

 handsome horses as I have ever seen in the thoroughbred 

 family. I am not saying anything about the imagined 

 beauty that the artist loves, — that beauty that you have 

 hung in pictures upon your walls, but never see any- 

 w^here else, but the beauty of shapeliness of limb and 

 fairness of look in the stable and in public, — the beauty 

 of the actual, not the ideal, horse. The sheen of the coat, 

 for instance, is supposed to be peculiar to thoroughbreds. 

 It is not so. The horses I have just mentioned have 

 a gloss as fine, a tinting as brilliant, and a glow as deep, 

 when led into the sunshine from their stables, as anv thorough- 

 bred I have ever seen ; and I do not hesitate to say, that, for 

 beauty, we have in New England as handsome horses in all 

 respects, save one, as are to be found on the face of the earth. 

 I said, with one exception. There is one thing our horses 

 lack. It is that style and kingliness of curvature, that sort 

 of curled look and appearance which a horse can put on in 

 public, which is associated only witii a horse that sta4|ds 15.3 

 in height. Most of our handsome horses are too small to be 

 imposing in their beauty. You must have a horse stand 

 about 15.3, if you are to get the finest expression of horse 

 beauty, in my judgment ; you must have him measure about 

 such a length from his ears to the sweep of his tail ; you 

 must have him stand in the pasture with a certain look of 

 height, breadth and length, in order to have him perfectly fill 

 your eye. To obtain some of these minor points, if you 



