162 LIFE WITH THE TROTTEKS. 



best condition in that way. These impressions I obtained 

 from Orrin Ilickok, and on this subject he knows more 

 than an 3' other man I ever saw. In my hints on training, I 

 shall give some of his ideas as he expressed them to me. 



From Chicago we went to Kalamazoo, and had identi- 

 cally the same battle there l)etween Witherspoon and 

 Thorne. Before this race came off, I met Mr. Stewart, an 

 old and respected citizen of Kalamazoo. He told me that, 

 in his younger days, he timed Flora Temple when she made 

 her record of 2:19| over the Kalamazoo track, and he 

 remarked at that time that he did not expect to time 

 another horse faster. In a conversation on the morning of 

 the race, he said he had heard a great deal of (jther 

 horses going very much faster than Flora Temple, but it had 

 never been his privilege to time one of them. I told him, if 

 he would come to the track that afternoon and did not 

 get such a chance, I would buy him a red apple. He said: 

 " I am getting old and feeble, but, if I thought that I would 

 have that opportunity, I would make an effort and come 

 down." In the afternoon as 1 drove on the track, I met 

 him there; and he said, " I am here, and have got my watch 

 Avitli me, and if I don't see some horse go better than 2:19f, 

 I will be disappointed as well as Avin a red apx^le." In the 

 lirst two heats Witherspoon was slow in getting off, and a 

 little inclined to be unsteady, and Thorne beat her in 2:20. 

 In the third heat she got well thawed out, and they had a 

 battle which ended by her getting home first in 2:17, which, 

 taking into consideration the condition oi the track, 1 con- 

 sidered the best heat she ever trotted. At the end of the 

 heat my friend Stewart said: " Well, you have won. I am 

 going home now, and I think that is the last time I will 

 ever see a horse trot in 2:17, as I fear my health Avill never 

 admit of my coming to a track again." Witherspoon beat 

 Thorne in the fourth heat; in the fifth she broke at the half- 

 mile pole, and it looked as though the race was ended, but 

 when she got straightened out she came witli one of her 

 tremendous bursts of speed, and while Turner drove Thorne 



