1 84 THE MORGAN HORSE 



dated. The amount of money bet was enormous, no doubt aggre- 

 gating a quarter of a million in a few minutes. 



"When the horses appeared upon the track to warm up for the 

 race, Dexter, driven by the accomplished reinsman, Budd Doble, was 

 greeted with a shout of applause. Soon the team appeared, and 

 behind it sat the great master of trotting tactics, Dan Mace. His 

 face, which has so often been a puzzle to thousands, had no mask 

 over it on this occasion. It spoke only that intense earnestness that 

 indicates the near approach of a supreme moment. The team was 

 hitched to a light skeleton wagon; Ethan wore breeching, and beside 

 him was a great, strong race-horse, fit to run for a man's life. His 

 traces were long enough to fully extend himself, but they were so 

 much shorter than Ethan's that he had to take the weight. Dexter 

 drew the inside, and on the first trial they got the 'send-off', without 

 either one having six inches the advantage. When they got the word, 

 the flight of speed was absolutely terrific, so far beyond anything I 

 had ever witnessed in a trotting horse that I felt the hair rising on 

 my head. The running horse was next to me, and, notwithstanding 

 my elevation, Ethan was stretched out so near the ground that I 

 could see nothing of him but his ears. I fully believe that for several 

 rods at this point they were going at a two-minute gait. 



" It was impossible that this terrible pace could be maintained 

 long, and just before reaching the first turn, Dexter's head began to 

 swim, and the team passed him, and took the track, reaching the 

 first quarter pole in thirty-two seconds, with Dexter three or four 

 lengths behind. The same lightning speed was kept up through the 

 second quarter, reaching the half-mile pole in I 104, with Dexter still 

 farther in the rear. Mace then took a pull on his team, and came 

 home a winner by six or eight lengths, in 2:15. When this time 

 was put on the blackboard, the response of the multitude was like 

 the roar of old ocean. Although some distance away, through the 

 second quarter of this heat, I had a fair, unobstructed side-view of 

 the stallion and of his action, when going at the lightning rate of 

 2 :o8 to the mile. I could not observe that he received the slightest 

 degree of propulsion from the running horse; and my conviction 

 was then, and is now, that any such propulsion would have interfered 

 with his own unapproachable action, and would have retarded, rather 

 than helped him. The most noticeable feature in his style of movement 

 was the remarkable lowness to which he dropped his body, and the 

 straight gliding line it maintained at that elevation. 



"The team now had the inside, and in the first attempt they were 

 started for the second heat, but they did not appear to me to be 



