THE HARTFORD RACE. 75 



straight heats in 2:15|, 2:18, 2:19i, Lucille doing the 

 fio:htinof in the last heat, while Fullerton had trotted 

 fast and honest in the first two heats, being only 

 beaten about three lengths in the 2:15f heat,^nd right 

 on Smuggler's wheel in the next in 2:18. We did not 

 start at Utica the following week, and Goldsmith Maid 

 easily beat the same field Smuggler had to defeat at 

 Rochester, she not having to go better than 2:18^ to 

 do it. 



^ext came the great free-for-all a.t Hartford, 

 August 31, 1876, a contest rivaling in importance and 

 result the memorable one at Cleveland a few weeks 

 earlier. The four competitors at Hartford were also 

 in the Cleveland race when Smuggler won, and from 

 that point down there had been nothing to decisively 

 settle the question of superiority between Smuggler 

 and the Maid, and it was indeed one on which turfmen 

 were greatlv divided. It was expected that the con- 

 test at Hartford would settle the question, and when 

 Goldsmith Maid, Smuggler, Bodine and Judge Fuller- 

 ton answered the judges^ bell for the free-for-all, ex- 

 citement and feeling ran high. The expectations of 

 the crowed ran high too, but still had any one foretold 

 a six-heat race wherein the stallion record w^ould be 

 broken, and every heat would be trotted better than 

 2:20, he would probably have been jeered at. 



The Maid, as usual, with that hop-skip-and jump trick 

 of hers, got away first in the initial heat, but Fullerton 

 went from the wire with the quarter horse rush of 

 which he seemed always capable at the start, and when 

 he reached the quarter at a 2:12 gait he was well clear 

 of Goldsmith Maid who led Smuggler and Bodine by 



