COLT-EACES. 145 



more than that which would be necessary to teach them 

 to trot, and be in condition sufficient to live through a 

 race without injury. One great object to attain in train- 

 ing is to have the colts engage in their exercises with the 

 same spirit and glee that they join in play; and by watch- 

 ing them closely we will be able to keep up that feeling 

 in a measure. If the task is not too arduous, they will 

 learn to like it, and bowl along the track or road with a 

 zest that will nearly equal the pastoral gambols. There 

 has arisen a feeling that a race to be worth seeing must 

 be fast. Associations and proprietors, of course, have re- 

 cognized this by doing everything in their power to have 

 the fastest horses in the country grace their tracks, no 

 matter if one was so much faster than all the rest that 

 there was no show of a contest. This has led those 

 having the management of courses to throw obstacles in 

 the way of colt races, which would lack the speed con- 

 sidered so essential. The interest to me in a race lies in 

 the closeness of the contest. I would hardly walk a mile 

 to see a horse that could go a mile in 2:15 if pitted 

 against one that took five or ten seconds longer, not 

 quarter that distance, if I had seen the actors performing 

 before. To see half a dozen or more colts engage in a 

 trial which was to determine a bona fide stake, and settle 

 which is the best, would take me a long way, and be of 

 far more interest than those hackneyed races now so 

 much in vogue. 



PRECEPTOR. This starring system which has been so 

 fashionable for a term of years, has, without doubt, been 

 a source of great injury to the trotting turf, not alone by 

 making fast time the only attraction to draw people to 

 the course, but inaugurating the hippodroming evil that 

 has done far more injury. The large purses advertised 

 meant only a division of the gate money ; and people that 

 had been induced to visit the arena, expecting to see a 



