TROTTING RACE>. 105 



burst of speed which will always be famous in the 

 chronicles of the American turf. His ears were laid 

 Mat on his head, his neck was stretched out low and 

 long, so as to bring his head scarcely above the level 

 of his withers, and fire flashed in his eye. 



"He trotted," writes Mr. Helm, who was among 

 the spectators, "with a grim desperation, that can- 

 not readily be forgotten by the thousands who were 

 present. His fleet-footed and never faltering oppo- 

 nent, the victor in a hundred trials, the Queen of 

 2.14, was already thirty -five feet ahead of him. 

 With a gathering of resources never perhaps held 

 by any other, and a rate of speed never equalled on 

 the trotting turf, he made for the front. There can 

 be no doubt, I think, that he moved for six or eight 

 hundred feet at the rate of a two-minute gait. He 

 trotted then as if he knew he could and would win 

 the heat; and in his very eye there was the look of 

 win it, or perish in the attempt. Woe to the animal 

 or vehicle that should come between him and the 

 end of that race ! His speed was terrific, his mo- 

 mentum was fearful, and his stroke as steadv and 

 true as any ever beheld. His very appearance was 

 a sort of magnetism that electrified the thousands 

 that were present." 



" It was more like flying than trotting," says the 

 report from which I first quoted. "Doble hurries 

 his mare into a break, but he cannot stop the dark 

 shadow which flits by him. His smile of triumph 

 is turned into an expression of despair. Smuggler 

 goes over the score a winner of the heat by a neck, 

 and the roar which comes from the grand stand and 

 the quarter stretch is deafening. The time was 



