234 ALHAMBRA AND MESSENGER DUROC. 



sweeping gait. His manner of going was so attractive at an early 

 day as to create impressions favorable to his greatness as a trotting 

 sire; and on one occasion, when his owner had offered him for sale at 

 $10,000, and he was in harness for exhibition to expectant purchasers, 

 his grand " opening out," as they termed it, was such that his owner 

 Avithdrew him before the applicants had time to signify their accept- 

 ance of the horse at the price named. 



The qualities here on this occasion exhibited were simply those of 

 gait and apparent capacity for speed, not actual speed itself. The 

 horse has not probably ever shown as great speed as Alhambra, and 

 it is often said his owner does not know how fast he can go. But 

 there is reason to believe he has never yet gone fast enough to show 

 great speed, whatever may have been his capacity. 



His breeding and his way of going both justified the opinion that 

 he would make a successful sire, and that his produce would display 

 great aptitude for the trotting gait. Such was my own opinion of 

 him as early as 1871, when I first saw him, and when his owner did 

 not esteem him so highly as another son of Hambletonian that he ha& 

 since passed out of his breeding establishment. I then selected him 

 as, iu my opinion, the great trotting stallion of the Hambletonian 

 family, and on the strength of this opinion subsequently gave him my 

 patronage, although I had at the first some cause for fearing there 

 might be some inherent offset to his prepossessing form and great 

 trotting promise. 



He has now been before the public more prominently for the past 

 few years than any other horse in the country. The correspondents 

 and journals have each vied with the other in their efforts to induce 

 the public to place upon him an estimate higher than ever before 

 placed on another of his years. He has been advertised in a manner 

 to excite in the popular mind the very highest opinion of his merits. 

 His lists of mares have been announced to be full, at a high price^ 

 and when an additional list was to be admitted, at a still higher price^ 

 the annoimcement had hardly reached distant parts of the country 

 until it was followed by another, declaring the enlarged list to be also 

 full. Of course such a flood tide of popularity could only be met^ 

 and that but partially, by an increase in price, and so it went from 

 $100 to $200, and finally to $300. 



It has, since the date above referred to, transpired that his limbs 

 have been found lacking in quality, or rather possessing certain traits 

 that now j^romise to dim the splendor of the great expectations with 

 which he started out. 



