168 HACKS AND HUNTERS 



Although, to my way of thinking, the easy canter 

 should be the paramount gait when travelling on the 

 road or in the country, and the trot should be more 

 or less reserved for the park, the judges seem to think 

 differently, and in most road classes in this country 

 the canter is altogether neglected and a horse who 

 trots a 2.20 gait, wins the road hack class. It is in- 

 deed sometimes rather hard to tell exactly what the 

 judges do consider a park hack or a road hack. I 

 remember once showing a snappy little thorough- 

 bred called "Northman" at Brooklyn, where he got 

 the gate in every class but the road class, in which 

 he apparently was highly thought of on account of 

 his superb canter. The following autumn, intending 

 to show at Mineola, I was tempted to enter him in 

 nothing but the road class, but, fortunately, thought 

 better of it and took a chance at the other classes. 

 This proved to be a most happy decision, for he won 

 every class straight through, including the champion- 

 ship, with the sole exception of the road hack class in 

 which the horses were not even asked to canter once. 

 The judge, a personal friend of mine, came up to me 

 during the class and said, sotto voce: " Too bad. This 

 time he's in the wrong class, you see he can't trot fast 

 enough." 



In England, where the people really use the horses 

 they show, and where the canter is the favored gait, 

 there is no marked distinction between the park and 

 the road hack ; in fact, there is no such thing as a park 

 hack, and the classes are divided simply into "riding 

 horses," which include weight-carrying horses and 

 cobs, and "saddle horses" or simply "hacks" em- 

 bracing all others. The "covert" hack bears no re- 

 semblance to our "road" hack. He is simply sup- 



