USE OF TROTTEKS. 125 



Travelling agents — lagmen^ as they used to be called — and 

 butchers' boys, have long stood alone in the possession of fast, 

 really fast, trotters ; and they were, nine times out of ten, screws, 

 cripples, or touched in the wind. 



But the rail has done away with the bagmen, while the other 

 classes remain in statu quo. 



The farmer, as a general thing, one may say ninety-nine times 

 in a hundred, keeps no vehicle lighter than his market cart, nor 

 any other animal to put before it than one of his light team- 

 horses, or, at best, a brood mare, or a young thing which he 

 despairs of selling for a hunter or a charger, and which he is 

 consequently breaking to harness. 



Every man, it may be said, in short, in the country, or in 

 country towns, who can afford to keep a horse for pleasure, much 

 more to keep two or three horses, unless it be those who have a 

 carriage and pair for state purposes and family use, keeps that 

 liorse with a \iew, occasionally, to seeing the hounds — farmers, 

 well to do in the world, invariably so ; and the shopkeepers and 

 business men, brewers, maltsters, millers, corn-dealers, butchers, 

 and the like, even to the village doctor, and the village attorney, 

 almost as frequently as the farmers. 



And if they do not aspire to the Earl's fox hounds, they are 

 constantly in the field with the squire's, or the subscription pack 

 of harriers, or with the long dogs, in view of " poor puss and 

 currant jelly." 



To none of these purposes are trotting horses suitable ; and 

 before trotting horses can, ever, become generally popular, or 

 generally in use in England, the whole spirit and tastes of the 

 English equestrian population must be changed, and field sports 

 must give way to road driving ; which is not a whit more likely 

 than that road driving and the trotting course will give way to 

 fox-hunting, hare-hunting, or coursing in the United States. 



In the United States, on the contrary, every farmer neces- 

 sarily keeps his wagon and driving horse ; and, as it costs him 

 no more to keep a good horse than a bad one, he naturally 

 keeps one which can administer both to his pleasure and his 

 self-esteem, beside doing him yeoman service on the road ; and 

 which may, probably, if he prove to be something uncommon, 

 turn out just such a prize to him, as the first-class hunter would 



