298 THE HORSE 



hands is because they do not hold the reins properly 

 when driving. It is a pity that, when we inherited from 

 our English, Scotch and Irish ancestors a love for 

 horses, we left behind us their perfect hands for driving 

 them. Everywhere in. Great Britain one sees horses 

 being driven with perfect hands, farm boys, lads on 

 delivery wagons, cab -drivers, teamsters, everybody; 

 while in America, with the exception of a few coachmen 

 in cities and an occasional gentleman -owner who has 

 been properly instructed, we are about the worst lot of 

 reinsmen to be found in any civilized country. I am 

 well aware that this will possibly be challenged or 

 looked upon as a very severe criticism. The trouble is, 

 our training has been wrong from the start, and as we 

 are, generally speaking, all wrong, we do not know how 

 bad we are. 



The American style of holding the reins is distinctly 

 our own; we have neither inherited it nor borrowed it 

 from any other nation. How, then, did we come to pos- 

 sess it? By copying after the style of jockies, sitting in 

 a sulky driving on a race-track. Nor is "hands" the 

 only thing we have copied from the trotting track to no 

 purpose. I refer to the overdraw check. This instru- 

 ment of torture, as well as the method of holding the 

 reins, has a purpose on the track, but off of it they are 

 alike abominable. 



The sole purpose of the overdraw is to extend the 

 nose of a trotter so as to give him a straighter air pas- 

 sage from nose to lungs, which, in races where the 

 fraction of a second wins, is undoubtedly useful, as the 

 volume of air to be pumped in and out under such terri- 



