OLD "HENRY CLAY." g- 



ficult name for the dear public to swallow (a " rose by any other name 

 will smell as sweet"), we will call it Arab, for it must eventually mero-e 

 into that. Arab or Clay, it is all the same to me so long as the blood 

 still continues to sustain the high character I have given the horse for 

 the future. For this reason it seems amply fitting that Henry Clay 

 should have a place among these royal pages. 



His Arabian paternity is authenticated ; and upon it he has never 

 thrown a stain ; but the rather, has shone with a brilliancy fairly eclips- 

 ing those of more primitive and noble birth. 



Horse lovers and breeders generally know full as well as I can tell 

 them, how severely I have been criticised, and how bitterly I have been 

 assailed for my strong and perhaps more ardent defence of Henry Clay 

 than was necessary. I have never written to wound, but from the earn- 

 estness of my convictions, knowing the horse as I did, and as my oppo- 

 nents did not. If at any time my pen has written more harshly than it 

 should, I crave the pardon of whoever may have been stung by its point. 

 All I ask in return, is that those who have maligned me most, shall 

 make the same diligent study and research that I have, and wherever 

 they find I have spoken truthfully, will have the candor to acknowledge 

 it; and in the course o\ horse events, should calamity overtake the valua- 

 ble representatives of the blood for which I have been contending, I have 

 still one further request to make even of my bitterest enemy: that if one 

 or more of them shall ever fall into his hands, he will have the honesty 

 and fairness to carry out in breeding, the principles which I have sought 

 and proven ; then, from his own actual experience say whether these 

 things are so. 



I cannot close these few pages without a word for the noble and 

 gifted young artist whose name graces the pictures of General Grant's 

 two Arabian stallions in this book, Herbert S. Kittredge. But for 

 him General Grant's Arabs, Old Henry Clay, and many others would 

 never have been reproduced in such faultless manner, so perfectly 

 true to life. That young Kittredge is dead is a public calamity, and 

 we feel that "we shall ne'er see his like again," although his young 

 associate, Andrew J. Schultz, has done splendidly in an effort to fill the 

 vacancy. 



Perhaps the author of this book may be pardoned in assuming to 

 himself the credit, not of making the artist, but of brinoqW him before 

 the public, especially in horse portraiture ; of encouraging his continu- 

 ance to a perfecting himself in this particular direction, recognizing as 

 we did, his remarkable gift in giving to the horse a personnel — if I may 



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