HIRAM WOODRUFF. 



IT has been remarked by philosophers, that the progress of the 

 human race is to be traced more distinctly in the individual his- 

 tory of its great men, than by any other process known to the human 

 observation. It has even been held by some writers, and among 

 them by Napoleon the Third, that the most familiar method by 

 which Providence confers his greatest benefits upon mankind is in 

 the raising up of favored men at certain periods, who, being imbued 

 with the new principles which are to advance the fortunes of their 

 era, are enabled " to stamp the age with the seal of their genius, 

 and to accomplish in a few years the labor of many centuries." 

 If this agreeable theory is correct, the humble trainer and driver 

 who departed this life at Jamaica Plains, Long Island, on the 

 morning of the 15th of March, 1867, may fairly rank among 

 the great men of his period, and be frankly awarded a" full share 

 of the honors which are due to those who have been benefactors 

 to their country. We measure genius, not merely by a man's social 

 status, but by " the empire of his ideas," the results which they 

 enforce, and the benefits which inure through them to the world. 

 To bring this principle to its test for the purposes of our theme, we 

 find that there are but two nations of the earth which possess a race 

 of animals known as the trotting-horse. One of these nations is 

 Kussia ; the other, the United States. In the first-named country, 

 we find an animal proceeding from the Arabian fountain, fused, it 

 is said, upon the Flanders stock, which is called the Orloff trotter; 

 but this breed, though bending the knee when striding, and though 

 having in other respects the trotting action, is considered by good 

 judges as being only half-developed. In this country, on the other 

 hand, we have " a paragon of animals," which is already the wonder 

 2 xrJL 



