RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 



will sneer at this as "puritanism," but no difference about the 

 name it will come. 



But, destructive and ruinous as gambling on races may be to 

 the life and moral character of young men, as well as to the 

 material interests of honest and reputable breeders, it hardly 

 comes within my province to discuss it further in this place, and 

 therefore I will return to the consideration of the pacer. As 

 the historical periodicity is now looming in sight when the moral 

 sense of the people will command the suppression of racing of 

 every kind, the question becomes exceedingly pertinent as to 

 what is to become of the pacer? He will no longer be of any 

 value as a gambling machine, the days of the saddle horse are 

 past as a means of travel, except by a few about the parks of the 

 cities, and however uppish and handsome he may be, he is not 

 and never will be a desirable driving horse in harness. We have 

 already used sufficient of his blood to create the American Saddle 

 Horse, and if the saddle horse shall produce ''after his kind" we 

 need no more infusions from the pure pacer. In the trotter his 

 blood has leavened everything, and in some lines more than we 

 desire or need. He has been a great source of trotting speed, 

 and if, as I am inclined to believe, Messenger's power to transmit 

 trotting speed came from the old English pacer, then the pacer is 

 the only source of that speed. Under the condition of things as 

 here foreshadowed he will probably sink back into the obscurity 

 from which he emerged twenty years ago. 



