LIFE WITH THE TROTTERS. 359 



myself am indebted to this class of men for very many valu- 

 able points in the way of shoeing a trotter. If I have a horse 

 with any peculiarities in the way of shoeing that I can not 

 master, 1 do as I did with Calmar : find a good blacksmith, 

 state the case to him, tell him what I know and think about 

 it, and nineteen times out of twenty I find this method a 

 success. As I have said before, it is the little things in 

 horse-racing that make or unmake the success of the aifair. 

 With Calmar it was simply a matter of having him properly 

 shod and his mouth rigged right. He was not a hard horse 

 to drive. My foreman, Walter Dwyer, could have driven 

 him anywhere. I often had George Perrin work him for 

 me and he used to say that instead of being a bad horse to 

 drive he was one of the easiest he ever saw. He not only 

 got to be a very steady horse after he stopped hitting him- 

 self, but also became a first-class breaker and a good scorer. 



Lady De Jarnette was one of the handsomest and high- 

 est-styled mares I ever saw. Her owner, Mr. W. H. Wilson, 

 showed her at many fairs and horse-races, where she invari- 

 ably took the first jDremium. She went with her head high 

 naturally, and I also noticed that Mr. Wilson seemed to 

 have a short over-check on her. I often saw Lady De Jar- 

 nette go miles close to 2:30, and while she went square and 

 level, she acted to me as though she clawed the air a good 

 deal, and I was positive that Mr. Wilson had her checked 

 too short. One day at Lexington he asked me to drive her 

 for him to obtain a faster record. V^Hien I went to the 

 stable I found the mare harnessed and her head high in 

 air. I suggested to the young man who had her in charge 

 that her head was a little high, I thought, but he answered 

 that it was all right ; she would not go with it any other way. 



I went out and scored her down a few times, drove her 

 down to the half-mile pole at about a 2:30 gait where she 

 commenced to hitch and hobble, and by the time she had got 

 into the head of the stretch acted as if she was choking, and 

 for fear she would I pulled her up and let her jog home easy 

 in about 2:35. Mr. Wilson was very anxious to know what 



