18 tkai]si:ng the trotting horse. 



book in a iielcl where such a \york has not heretofore 

 existed. Xot what he did, but what he learned, he 

 wished to tell ; and he wished to tell it not to gratify 

 personal pride, but that others might learn from his 

 experiences. The idea of devoting a whole book to re- 

 citing the personal doings of a trainer and driver was 

 always repulsive to Mr. Marvin, as it necessarily must 

 be to a man with aims higher than self-glorification. 



He took the broader, wiser view that not what a 

 man does^ but idiat he can teach, interests reading and 

 thinking horsemen. Throughout the preparation of 

 this book the author has, in teaching how to train 

 trotting horses, studiously kept his own personality in 

 the backoTound ; but the editor recognizes that the 

 Avork would be in a measure imperfect without a sketch 

 of the author's life, and in the following pages his 

 career is outlined. 



Charles Marvin was born in Springwater VallcA^ 

 Genesee County, Xew York, on ^November 24, 1839. 

 His father, Don A. Marvin, was by occupation a farmer 

 and trader, and his mother, whose maiden name was 

 Thorne, also came of a family of "tillers of the soil." 

 Mr. Marvin's paternal descent is from what was known 

 in family genealogy as " the Hartford branch " of the 

 Marvin line. His father was directly descended in the 

 sixth remove from Matthew Marvin, who was born in 

 England earl}^ in the seventeenth century, emigrated 

 to America, and was one of the original proprietors 

 of what is now the city of Hartford, Connecticut. 



Charles was the second of a family of sev^en, and in 

 their youth the uneventful lives of himself and his five 

 brothers ran in the same groove as the career of the 



