24 JUSTIN MORGAN 



CHAPTER 11. 



TRUE IS BROKEN TO HARNESS. 



Even, pleasant and cheerful was True's natural dis- 

 position, but besides these traits there were others that 

 went to make up the peculiar perfection horse-flesh had 

 attained in the twenty-five years before his birth. 



A courage, vitality, and zest seemed to be in the very 

 air of the world at that period of horse history, and the 

 blend — through his father — of Arabian, Barb and Turk 

 had produced in him the most ideal of horse characters. 



That Southern strain was, no doubt, stimulated by 

 the clear, bracing climate of New England, and the com- 

 bination of circumstances which developed his muscles 

 and expanded his chest, made him the fit founder of a 

 race. 



About the year he was born Eclipse, his kins-horse, 

 died. 



Eclipse was that four-footed bird ''behind whom the 

 whirlwind toiled in vain" and who, in his greatest race, 

 "beat the other horse by two hundred yards, without 

 urging !"* 



Since then men have said that Eclipse ran "a mile a 

 minute," but Gipsey told her son dififerently; she knew 

 horses only ran against each other, not against time. 



She also told the colt the part his family had played 

 in the late War, and how General Washington, himself, 

 had ridden one of them at Trenton ; but she was obliged 



* Eclipse and O'Kelly, page 88 ; Theodore Andrea Cook, M. A., 

 F. S. A. 



