HIS MARVELOUS SPEED. 393 



trotting power of the horse seems to be in his exceedingly, muscular 

 body, that works in perfect harmony with his quarters and limbs, and 

 in the exact adaptation and muscular harmony of his hindquarters. 

 His stifles do not spread out as wide as either of the two families 

 described in a former chapter. They spread wide enough for his 

 purposes; but his thigh not being too long for the length of his limb 

 and quarter, he has no difficulty in folding his members with a 

 rapidity and a precision that ought to go far toward converting these 

 gentlemen who are all the time demanding such excessively wide 

 stifle-action, and such elevation of the hocks. Let me say just here, 

 and finally, that it is of no value, except for display in the open lot or 

 field, that a horse lift his hocks so high in trotting. I want him to 

 send them back underneath the sulky as far as he can reach them, 

 but do not want him to elevate them in the face of his driver. I want 

 them to propel like the eccentric of a locomotive, rather than revolve 

 like the crank of a great steamboat. 



The head of Smuggler is a plain one, having only a slight Roman 

 deviation from that of a first-class thoroughbred of the larger type, 

 and hung on a long neck that curves slightly; but in action, while 

 trotting fast, he reaches his head far out and lays his ears back, the 

 top of his head hardly appearing higher than the level of the withers. 

 It was in this way he came, at Cleveland, after being held in a pocket 

 until within one thousand feet of the wire, when, having dropped far 

 enough behind, he came with a grim desperation, and a speed that 

 can not readily be forgotten by the thousands who saw it. His fleet- 

 footed and never-faltering opponent, the victor in a hundred trials — • 

 the Queen of 2:14 — was already thirty-five feet ahead of him. With 

 a gathering of resources never, perhaps, held by any other, and a rate 

 of speed never equaled on the trotting " turf, he made for the front. 

 There can be no doubt, I think, that he trotted, for six or eight hun- 

 dred feet, at the rate of a two-minute gait. He trotted then as if he 

 knew he could, and would, win it; and in his very eye there was the 

 look of win it or perish in the attempt. Woe to the animal or vehicle 

 that should come between him and the end of that race. His speed 

 was terrific, his momentum was fearful, and his stroke as steady and 

 true as ever beheld. He won the heat, and for once the little queen 

 was vanquished, and the vast crowd that witnessed the contest was 

 fairly carried away by the excitement. His very appearance was a 

 sort of magnetism that electrified the thousands that were present. 



In the early history of this horse we heard much of his breaking 



