PATRON AGAIN DEFEATED. 151 



race was a very easy one for Manzanita, and the work 

 so helped her that she was fit the next day for the 

 effort of her life. She clearly demonstrated her 

 superiority over Patron, which was questioned after 

 her race against him the year previous. We have not 

 yet seen the four-year-old that could have beaten Man- 

 zanita that day. In the form she was when she played 

 with Patron, she could out-trot and out-stay any four- 

 year-old that ever lived. She had so much speed, and 

 could rate so well from wire to wire that nothing of her 

 age could have lived with her for a mile, and certainly 

 no other horse could have even made as good an 

 attempt, vain though it was, as did Patron. 



As to Patron I may say here that I did not wholly 

 like his gait. His stroke forward was quick, but some- 

 what spasmodic and peculiar. But he was a horse of 

 great speed, determmed and level-headed, and all in 

 all was one of the greatest young horses that has yet 

 campaigned. His defeats in his three and four-year-old 

 form, by Manzanita, were nothing to his discredit. He 

 had a superior, and it was no disgrace to lower his 

 colors to the champion of his age. He was not first, 

 but he was next to first. It has always seemed to me 

 that Patron's misfortune was that his trainer, his 

 owners and his friends have over-rated him as a turf- 

 horse, and have asked of him what was beyond his 

 capacity. Their confidence in his ability to beat Man- 

 zanita, at St. Louis, where she really had him at her 

 mercy every yard of every heat, and in later times 

 their attempting to beat Atlantic one day and " the 

 demon," Clmgstone, the next, and then asking him to 

 campaign against so great a horse as Prince Wilkes, 



