486 THE HOESE OF AMEBICA. 



At the very inception of the idea that the trotting horse could 

 be bred and developed into a breed, an opinion prevailed every- 

 where that it could not be done. The theory that speed at the 

 trot came from speed at the gallop was universally held and 

 advocated. In 1868 I made a tour among the breeders and 

 horsemen of Tennessee and Kentucky, for the purpose of gather- 

 ing information about both runners and trotters. Those States 

 were then beginning to pull themselves together after the war. 

 At General Harding's, among others, I was shown a large, heavy- 

 boned colt, and the General remarked that if he did not make a 

 race horse he would make a capital stallion to take to the West 

 and breed on trotting mares. At Balie Peyton's I was shown a. 

 great big, coarse horse that had run some races and won in very 

 slow time, and that was unsound at many points. He was over 

 sixteen hands high, and had very bad limbs. Mr. Peyton re- 

 marked that "he was too big for a race horse, but he would do 

 well in the West as a trotting sire." This was the remark every- 

 where as applied to big colts that couldn't run. About the same 

 time Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, then in the employ of a sport- 

 ing paper in New York, as an editorial writer, expressed his 

 sorrow that Hambletonian did not have a thoroughbred cross, 

 close up, and his opinion that such a cross would have made him 

 a much greater sire. Thus, East and West, North and South, the 

 opinion prevailed everywhere that the way to breed the trotter was 

 to go to the runner. This universal belief, wholly without founda- 

 tion, soon generated the cry, "more running blood in the trotter," 

 and the instincts of all the rogues in the country were quickened to 

 make their pedigrees conform to the popular belief of what was best. 

 This resulted in a period of fictitious claims, for when a man had a 

 colt out of a mare of unknown breeding the rule was to say, "dam 

 thoroughbred," and if the owner was unusually conscientious 

 and knew the breeding for one or two crosses, he would give them 

 correctly, but seldom failed to tack on two or three thoroughbred 

 crosses that were wholly fictitious. After all my years of experi- 

 ence with the pedigrees of horses, it is my deliberate and candid 

 opinion that no word in the English language has been so much 

 abused as the word "thoroughbred." It has been the medium 

 of more deceptions and downright falsehoods than any other 

 word in the vocabulary. For many years it was the word above 

 all other words that the unscrupulous jockey employed to defraud 

 his inexperienced victim. And if there had been no strong hand 



