ROBERT BONNER ON SHOEING 



When the speaker took his seat, President Bron- 

 son arose and said: " We have been waiting for 

 five years to get Mr. Bonner to come to one of our 

 meetings. I think we first tried in 1890. But now 

 that we have heard him we are amply repaid for 

 waiting so long." 



In 1898, a few months previous to his death, Mr. 

 Bonner sent me a communication on shoeing, the 

 manuscript of which I have preserved : 



" 8 West 56th Street. 



" When I purchased the great road horse Pray- 

 tell, about a month ago, at the Madison Square sale, 

 the audience, as the daily papers stated, cheered 

 heartily, and the press generally said many kind 

 things; but since then one writer, in a critical mood, 

 has expressed the hope that I will be more successful 

 in treating PraytelPs feet than I was in directing 

 the shoeing of Joe Elliott, intimating that I had 

 failed with that horse. This critic had to go a long 

 way back over a quarter of a century for the ma- 

 terial for his criticism; but I ought to thank him 

 for bringing up the case of Joe Elliott. Let me 

 state the facts. In 1869 I bought that horse, paying 

 $10,000 for him. He was then five years old, and 

 the fastest mile that he had trotted before coming 

 into my possession was 2.33. I immediately sent 

 him to Carll Burr, and he drove him in 2.26. In 

 the fall of that year I brought him home, and the 

 next day, after removing his shoes, I drove him over 

 to the Fashion course where he was taken out of my 

 road wagon and driven by John Murphy to sulky 

 in 2.194. When he was six years old, Murphy drove 

 him in 2.18^; and in his eight-year-old form I sent 



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