2 Tbe American Thoroughbred 



means of sport came into vogue. In spite of her 

 years of precedence, England has scarce had upon 

 her own home turf — which is the mother turf — 

 more delightful days of racing, accompanied by 

 more delightful incident, than that which accom- 

 panied the early sport of the running of horses 

 in these United States of America. 



Somewhere, at some time in the long-ago, the 

 writer remembers a tall gentleman, with the man- 

 ners of a grenadier, delivering a sort of lecture 

 on the sword. He illustrated his talk with an 

 exhibition of the swords of all times and of all 

 nations. He concluded his oration with a strik- 

 ing passage, of which there remains to this day 

 in the writer's mind this line: " It [the sword] has 

 ever been the friend and the faithful of the gen- 

 tleman." And it would seem, following this story 

 of the thoroughbred race-horse, or that species of 

 the equine which has furnished sport for half the 

 civilizations of the world, and peculiarly and par- 

 ticularly for those civilizations which had the 

 Anglo-Saxon race for their beginning, that the 

 thoroughbred has ever been the companion and 

 the faithful. Certainly we owe his early and 

 prominent existence in America to the coming of 

 the first gentleman. 



