62 HORSE PORTRAITURE. 



with it. I have scores of these friends to love and ad- 

 mire, and whose friendship will cheer me through life, if 

 unfortunate enough to have neither home nor family to 

 gild its declining years. I am sorry you have located 

 your breeding farm so near the setting sun as even the 

 west bank of the Mississippi. It will be too far to go to 

 see the results of your making trotters of thoroughbreds, 

 and I am afraid ere you send the first installment to 

 market my heats will be ended, and, gently as the ancient 

 scythe-bearer has always treated me, he will undoubtedly 

 leave me behind the distance pole at last, though I shall 

 make a game struggle, and hope the closing event will 

 bring no discredit on the many honorable contests that 

 have preceded it. 



PUPIL. The Falcon ? 



PRECEPTOR. Yes, I know that the Falcon which I have 

 been so foolish as to let you know how much I like, 

 is thrown in my face as sufficient proof that the colts from 

 your twenty-five mares will all, or at least a majority of 

 them, trot fast. " One swallow does not make a summer," 

 nor will one thoroughbred establish the claims of the 

 whole race to trotting speed. 



PUPIL. Did you not admit a short time ago, that if 

 blood horses were trained as the trotting families are, 

 they would excel them in their own branch of going. 



PRECEPTOR. I did say if race colts were placed in the 

 same thorough training as Membrinos, Hambletonians 

 and Pilots, there would be as many trotters among them 

 as among the colder blooded ones, but I did not want 

 you to infer that in a breeding establishment to rear 

 trotters, I would discard those families that had shown 

 their adaptation for that gait. It would be well enough 

 for some of our rich men to attempt the proof, who could 

 pocket the loss, if it should prove such. In fact, I told 

 you that I would have French mares, so that the colts 



