AN UNSUCCESSFUL BEGINNING. 97 



breath between clashes, he would make speed faster, 

 and do bis work with eagerness, spirit and relish. He 

 saw that speed was the great essential, and that the 

 best results would be attained b}" making speed and 

 then conditioning the horse to carr\^ it, rather than by 

 drilling him into condition without first teaching him 

 to trot at a high rate. In short, he outlined to me the 

 central features of the plan of training that is ex- 

 plained in detail in coming chapters of this work, 

 though of course years of experiment and practice have 

 modified in some details the projected system then un- 

 folded by Governor Stanford. After endeavoring to 

 give me a clear understanding of the methods he 

 wished followed, he instructed me to train Occident, 

 Edo^ino;ton and the other horses accordinHv. 



This was new and rather strange to me, and I am 

 free to say that while I was determined to do the best 

 I could to carry out my employer's instructions, I had 

 very little faith in the ultimate success of the experi- 

 ment. Horse-trainers are probably the hardest men in 

 the world to teach — not because they are slow to learn 

 when they want to, but because they know so much 

 already that they cannot learn any more, and I pre- 

 sume I was no better in this respect than the majority. 

 AYe are all too apt to think that our way is necessarily 

 the best, and that no other possible plan can be better. 

 I have also, in traveling along the highway of a busy 

 life, observed that few mechanics work well with new 

 and strange tools; that we never travel a new road 

 quite so rapidly and steadily as over the beaten paths ; 

 and, moreover, it has seemed to me to be a rule that 

 when a man starts in to do a thing believing that it is 



