160 HACKS AND HUNTERS 



not only by the gigantic shoves of its hero workers, 

 but by the aggregating tiny pushes of every honest 

 worker." 



We occasionally find mismanaged shows or often 

 run across incompetent judges, who either give only 

 a superficial glance at the horses, or who have special 

 fads, or, worse yet, those who have in their minds no 

 fixed standards at all, but distribute prizes as politi- 

 cians might dole out favors — to satisfy various inter- 

 ests. As a general rule, however, the judges are honest 

 and fair and thoroughly competent. Often horses who 

 are supposed to have been turned down unfairly have 

 been given the gate for a bad fault, which, though in- 

 visible to the "rail bird," is glaringly evident to the 

 judge, in the centre of the ring, where he can stand 

 directly behind or in front of the exhibit. Although 

 poor horses do sometimes win, in the long run the 

 horse that wins the most ribbons throughout the year 

 is generally pretty sure to be the best at his particular 

 game. Often the winner is merely the best of his par- 

 ticular type, and the type selected is not that which 

 many of us would favor; but each year, however, finds 

 a little improvement, even in type, and the horses of 

 to-day are superior in this, as in other countless ways, 

 to those exhibited in the long ago. Mr. James G. Mar- 

 shall has, for example, an interesting and amusing col- 

 lection of menus, gotten out by the Hotel Waldorf- 

 Astoria during horse-show week and ranging through 

 many years of the past. At the top of each menu is 

 a small picture of one of the previous year's winners, 

 and it is a liberal education to study these pictures 

 and note that many of the champions of those days 

 would scarcely be high class enough to be placed even 

 in the ribbons nowadays. 



