HOW THE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 529 



if ever made, must be made almost, if not quite wholly, from the 

 first three volumes of the "Trotting Register," and these volumes 

 are carefully protected by copyright. J have spent several years 

 of hard labor in compiling them, and a large amount of money 

 in traveling over the country tracing and verifying the facts 

 which they contain. You ask me, in effect, to take my three 

 volumes and to skim all the cream out of them to make one 

 volume for you. Now, before going an inch further, we must 

 understand what you are willing to pay for my property, before 

 I can entertain any proposition to dump it into the lap of your 

 committee." Sometimes I have been disposed to lament my 

 hard fate in coming so near the exalted position of "hired-man" 

 to two such distinguished characters as Henry C. McDowell and 

 Lucas Brodhead, but I missed it. To this letter I never received 

 any reply, nor did these gentlemen ever make any report of their 

 negotiations with me to the "Committee on Rules." 



The next news we had from the "Pinafore" was the announce- 

 ment that the book would be compiled at Woodburn, by LeGrand 

 Lucas, and on inquiry as to his capacity and knowledge of the 

 subject it was learned that he was a young kinsman of Brod- 

 head's, perhaps still in his "teens," who was employed there as a 

 kind of clerk or bookkeeper. He was evidently an innocent lad, 

 for he had been installed in his new office only a very few days 

 when he wrote me for certain numbers of the Monthly, in dupli- 

 cate. In reply I wrote him that each volume of the "Register" 

 and each number of the Monthly was legally covered by copy- 

 right and that I could not consent to his taking my property to 

 make up his new book, and that he must do as I had done com- 

 mence at the beginning and hunt for himself. Poor boy, what 

 could he do? If he were debarred from the use of the Wallace 

 publications, where on the face of the globe could he get the 

 information? If cribbing had to be done in order to carry out 

 the scheme, it would be very indiscreet to do it under the very 

 roof of Woodburn and under the supervision of its manager. 

 Thus the work languished for months, and little or no progress 

 was made. 



In Chicago there was one James H. Sanders, publishing a 

 paper, whom I had known for years. He never had an idea of 

 his own in the world, but he was one of the most notorious and 

 shameless plagiarists that I have ever known. As an illustration 

 of what I knew about him in this department of industry and 



