THOROUGHBRED VS. KENTUCKY HORSE 51 



exercise in indulging in other vigorous sports, and they 

 hack for comfort and relaxation. I remember that 

 the first time I ever rode in Rotten Row, Hyde Park, 

 I seemed to be the only person in the Row who ever 

 trotted, and yet for an American I use that gait very 

 rarely. To them, and I quite agree with them, a 

 good canter is the raison d'etre for hacking. And they 

 quite naturally, therefore, consider the thoroughbred 

 the ideal of what a hack should be. Those English 

 people who cannot afford the pure-bred article, or who 

 are too inexperienced to ride it, procure a horse most 

 nearly approaching that type. 



Over here things are different. The average Ameri- 

 can is not a horseman. He rides — not for pleasure — 

 but in order to exercise, and he is seen most often in 

 city parks, bumping his liver to his heart's content. 

 To him the Kentucky-bred horse, with his high, snappy 

 trot, appeals vastly more than the thoroughbred, and 

 from his point of view quite rightly so. As long as this 

 type of rider exists, and he probably always will in this 

 country, the Kentucky saddle-horse as a three-gaited 

 animal, and quite aside from his five-gaited career in 

 the South, will undoubtedly continue to serve a useful 

 purpose. 



But we hope that one day this type of American 

 rider is going to be in the minority instead of the 

 majority. Every year country life over here is grow- 

 ing to resemble more closely the country life as lived 

 in England. Every year more and more men and 

 women are entering into all sorts of healthful outdoor 

 sports and learning to enjoy more keenly hunting, 

 polo, etc., and consequently to look on hacking as a 

 relaxation instead of a form of Swedish gymnastics, 

 and they are, therefore, coming more and more to ap- 



