AUTHOR'S APOLOGY 



"I only thought to make 



I know not what; nor did I undertake 

 Thereby to please my neighbor. No; not I. 

 I did it mine own self to gratify." 



— John Bunyan. 



So many countless books have been written on the 

 subject of horses that in adding another volume to 

 that already prodigious list, it seems as if an apology, 

 or at least an explanation, were due my readers. 



Confession is good for the soul, and possibly it is as 

 well to admit, first as last, that the very human instinct 

 "to create," to follow Carlyle's advice when he said: 

 "Produce, Produce — Though it be but the merest 

 fraction of a fragment — Produce it" — is very largely 

 responsible for this book's existence. 



That is not all. That alone would scarcely be ample 

 justification. Added to this the authoress also hopes 

 that she will, perhaps, be able to fill a long-felt need 

 among the horse lovers of America. The majority of 

 books obtainable on the subject of the handling of 

 high-class horses are English works, and in England 

 the conditions of hunting and showing are so different, 

 that the advice given can, as a general rule, be of as- 

 sistance only to the expert capable of applying it to 

 fit American conditions. 



Those thinking to find in this volume any new or 

 startling facts, anything original, will be disappointed. 

 In horsemanship, as well as in nearly everything else, 

 "There is nothing (or at least very little) worth think- 



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