234 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 



There are three hard things in Kentucky, 

 only one of which is to my taste ; namely, hard 

 bread, hard beds, and hard roads. The roads 

 are excellent, macadamized as in England, and 

 nearly as well kept; but that "beat-biscuit," a 

 sort of domestic hardtack, in the making of 

 which the flour or dough is beaten long and 

 hard with the rolling-pin, is, in my opinion, a 

 poor substitute for Yankee bread; and those 

 mercilessly hard beds — the macadamizing prin- 

 ciple is out of place there too. It would not 

 be exact to call Kentucky butter bad; but with 

 all their fine grass and fancy stock, they do not 

 succeed well in this article of domestic manu- 

 facture. But Kentucky whiskey is soft, se- 

 ductively so, and I caution all travelers to be- 

 ware how they suck any iced preparation of it 

 through a straw of a hot day ; it is not half so 

 innocent as it tastes. 



The blue-grass region has sent out, and con- 

 tinues to send out, the most famous trotting 

 horses in the world. Within a small circle not 

 half a dozen miles across were produced all the 

 more celebrated horses of the past ten years; 

 but it has as yet done nothing of equal excellence 

 in the way of men. I could but ask myself 

 why this ripe and mellow geology, this stately 

 and bountiful landscape, these large and sub- 

 stantial homesteads, have not yet produced a 

 crop of men to match. Cold and sterile Mas- 

 sachusetts is far in the lead in this respect. 

 Granite seems a better nurse of genius than the 

 lime- rock. The one great man born in Ken- 



