306 THE RACK NATURAL 



semblance of irregularity. No argument is needed to show 

 why ; the gaits themselves prove the case. 



I maintain that the rack or, to employ our new coin- 

 age all Southern gaits are natural. You will pardon my 

 recurrence to this subject, but it is a part of my text, you 

 see, and I like to ring the changes on it. When one is in 

 the pulpit, he has the right, I believe, to go back to his 

 text, even at the risk of occasional repetitions. You will 

 find that I only partially repeat myself, and I propose 

 that no equine sinner shall remain immersed in his iniqui- 

 ty for lack of proper instruction. I say the rack is natu- 

 ral. Every donkey in the East, and in all European coun- 

 tries where he is used, racks as a matter of course ; so does 

 every horse that is ridden in the Orient a fact I have al- 

 ready pointed out. You may say that this does not prove 

 the case. Strike, but listen ! 



No one will deny that the walk is the first of the natu- 

 ral gaits. Now, if you take a young horse, who does not 

 come of strict trotting ancestry, and has not been broken 

 to harness, and after training him to a light, elastic, fast 

 walk, will push him on to a sharper gait, he will not fall 

 into a jog-trot ; he will amble or rack. If you let him go 

 a careless, humdrum, snaffle -bridle gait, unworthy of a 

 saddle-beast, he may perhaps fall into a jog ; but that is 

 not my point ; I am talking of a well -poised horse, not a 

 wheeler. Again, even if your horse is on a jog-trot, if 

 you will use whip or spur to unsettle him, and at the 

 same time not allow him head enough to gallop, he will 

 fall into an amble or rack. Even a horse trotting in har- 

 ness, if frightened, or struck with the whip, or jerked up 

 with the reins, will fall into a rack. Why, then, is the 

 rack artificial ? It will not do to call it so. If the Eng- 

 lish made as good saddle-beasts as they make hunters or 

 racers, we might subscribe to their opinion, and allow the 



