LIFE \V\TU THE TROTTERS. 229 



trainer to another, whicli, bj' the way, I consider a very bad 

 practice, as no matter how mucii exjDerience a man may 

 have had or how capable he is, you need never expect to 

 get the best results out of a horse by having him trained 

 and driven by a number of different j)eople, even if they 

 are all first class. Every man trains a horse differently, 

 every man drives them differently and when you take into 

 consideration the fact that in order to bring a horse to his 

 best possible condition and speed, years of careful training- 

 are required, you can pei'haps see that frequent changes of 

 trainers are a detriment. When J. Q. was placed in my 

 charge I for one thought his days of usefulness were 

 about over. He at that time had a record of 2:17^. He 

 had been rather unfortunate, having been out of condition 

 and lost races to horses with slower records. The first race 

 I drove him he was defeated, but still his performance 

 rather opened my eyes to the fact that J. Q. was a little 

 better horse than either myself or the public gave him credit 

 for being. That the public realized the fact I doubt very 

 much, as I noticed that whenever J. Q.'s name appeared as a 

 starter in a race it never created any very great sensation 

 among the betting fraternit3^ 



The second race still further convinced me that I had 

 made no mistake about his ability and that he was liable to 

 be a right good horee. The third race made such an im- 

 pression on my mind that I took his owner aside, and we 

 commenced to lay i)lans to spread our net and make a haul 

 that would include the sturgeon as well as the suckers. 



This was in the summer of 1887, and I had taken J. Q. 

 to the Detroit meeting and trotted him there and at Cleve 

 land and Buffalo against Arab, Charley Hilton, and some 

 other horses that were supposed to out-class him a great 

 deal. Arab was a star trotter through the circuit that j^ear. 

 Orrin Hickok had him in charge, and as the next best one 

 in his class, Charley Hilton was driven l)y my friend 

 William H. Crawford; these two gentlemen from California 

 had thus far generally been able to take first and second 



