236 LIFE WITH THE TROTTERS. 



I could see that the medicine was operatino- on his stomach. 

 We kept him tied np through the day so that he could not 

 eat his bedding, but did not muzzle him. I divided the 

 eight pounds of oats into five feeds, and gave him in addi- 

 tion a small quantity?- of hay night and morning. Every 

 day he seemed to get brighter, sharper, and have more dash 

 and speed. From what I had seen of the horse in Lis turf 

 career I made up my mind that whenever he had jolenty of 

 speed it took a race-horse to beat him. I had heard joeople 

 say that he was what you would call a soft horse, but as 

 good a judge of a trotting horse as David Bonner once re- 

 marked in my presence that there was nothing in Cling- 

 stone' s breeding to indicate it, he having in his j^edigree a 

 combination of the blood of Rysdyk's Hambletonian, 

 American Star and the best thoroughbred cross that was 

 ever in a trotting pedigree, that of Lexington. 



This race was in some respects a battle between strains of 

 blood that had their a^espective partisans. I have told how 

 Clingstone is bi^ed, and Harry Wilkes was also in fashion- 

 able lines, his sire, George Wilkes, like the sire of Cling- 

 stone, being by Eysdyk's Hambletonian, while on his 

 dam's side there was the blood of the j)acer Captain 

 Walker, a horse that in addition to the dam of Harry 

 Wilkes had also sired the dam of Black Cloud, a stallion that 

 had made a record of 2:17^, and went some good races where 

 the heats were split. People from all parts of the country 

 came to Detroit to see this race, among them many breeders, 

 and prominent in this section of the throng were Mr. Sam- 

 uel A. Browne and United States Senator Stockbridge of 

 Michigan, who were then, as now, proprietors of one of the 

 largest breeding establishments in the West, it being located 

 at Kalamazoo, Mich. As they were naturally anxious to 

 have on their jjlace stallions and mares of the best strains 

 of blood they had come to see the race between these two 

 representative horses. To show that Messrs. Browne & 

 Stockbridge are men of liberal and progressive methods, 

 once their mind is made up, it may be said that they were 



