194 THE HORSE. 



" An hour after the match," says the editor of the Spirit of 

 the Times, " we visited Trustee in his stable ; he exhibited no 

 distress, and on the following day, was as ' fine as silk.' We 

 have seen him half a dozen times since, and he never looked or 

 trotted better. He is a prodigy, but blood will tell." 



All this may be true. It is clear that, in this case, it was 

 true. Trustee was something better than a half-bred horse — for 

 his mother, Fanny PuUen, though 1 believe her pedigree is not 

 ascertained, showed that she had more than an ordinary share of 

 blood — and that of the very most fashionable modern English 

 blood. One would think, therefore, that this wonderful per- 

 formance, at a trot, would induce some persons, who are con- 

 tinually howling about the degeneracy of the modern English 

 thoroughbred, its inability to stay a distance, and its uselessness 

 as a progenitor, to make some pause. 



Trustee is bred precisely as are half the hunters in England 

 of the class which carry heavy weights, and do stay the distance 

 at a killing pace ; and I know no instance which better cor- 

 roborates what I am fearless to enunciate, that if the best 

 American trotting trainers were to take the pick of the best 

 three and four parts thoroughbred hunters, out of the best Eng- 

 lish stables, and take them in hand, they would make them the 

 best trotters in the world. He was — for he is gone, alas ! where 

 the good horses go — also the half-brother of our far-famed. Fash- 

 ion and the sharer of her constancy and courage. 



I will not say that it is not well, now that the deed is done, 

 and that the gallant animal was none the worse for it, that the 

 physical possibility of horseflesh performing such a feat of 

 endurance, should be demonstrated. 



But now that it has been demonstrated, and that there can 

 be no practical utility in the demonstration — for we can no more 

 practically employ trotting-horses, at twenty miles within the 

 hour, for any useful end, than we could have employed the 

 north-eastern passage, to demonstrate the existence of M^hich so 

 many noble lives have been squandered — the experiments should 

 cease, or should summarily be put to an end by legislation. 



What one horse has done, doubtless some other horse can be 

 found to do. But in ascertaining which is the one that can, 

 out of the thousands which cannot, more than they can fly, we 



