SADDLE HORSES. 159 



This quality of springiness or elasticity is almost, 

 if not quite, the most important one that a saddle 

 horse can possess. Certainly as regards road riding, 

 an elastic trot, whether long or short, is the best gait 

 for pleasure or for exercise, or for accomplishing a 

 distance. No attention whatever has been paid dur- 

 ing the past fifty years to the production of a Mor- 

 gan saddle horse, but the breed still contains the 

 material for a quick-stepping, tough, and showy ani- 

 mal very well adapted for city and suburban use, — 

 what is called in England a "hack." Riding in the 

 rural districts of New England — and this is true in 

 almost equal degree of the Middle, and perhaps also 

 of the Northwestern States — is nearly a lost art. 

 There are whole townships where it would be hard to 

 find a saddle, unless it were some antiquated, moth- 

 eaten contrivance, covered with cobwebs and stowed 

 away in a hay-loft. 



The equine interests of New England, Boston ex- 

 cepted, all centre in the trotter. But this was not so 

 formerly. Wherever ten men of Anglo-Saxon blood 

 are gathered together, there will be found two at least 

 who love horses, and to whom trials of speed between 

 horses soon become a necessity. The passion for 

 trotters set in early in the present century, but before 

 that horse racing was common in the Eastern States, 

 as elsewhere ; and well-bred horses from Canada were 

 often imported for riding and racing purposes. To 

 this fact, indeed, is due much of the best roadster 

 blood in New England. The Drew family thus arose, 

 and some of the swiftest, handsomest branches of the 

 Morgan family derive, on the maternal side, from 

 well bred mares of English stock brought from Canada 

 and the Provinces. 



