A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 233 



well in this article of domestic manufacture. But 

 Kentucky whiskey is soft, seductively so, and I cau- 

 tion all travelers to beware how they suck any iced 

 preparation of it through a straw of a hot day ; it is 

 not half so innocent as it tastes. 



The blue-grass region has sent out, and continues 

 to send out, the most famous trotting horses in the 

 world. Within a small circle not half a dozen miles 

 across were produced all the more celebrated horses 

 of the past ten years ; but it has as yet done nothing 

 of equal excellence in the way of men. I could 

 but ask myself why this ripe and mellow geology, 

 this stately and bountiful landscape, these large and 

 substantial homesteads, have not yet produced a crop 

 of men to match. Cold and sterile Massachusetts 

 is far in the lead in this respect. Granite seems 

 a better nurse of genius than the lime-rock. The 

 one great man born in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, 

 was not a product of this fertile region. Henry 

 Clay was a Virginian. The two most eminent native 

 blue-grass men were John C. Breckinridge and John 

 J. Crittenden. It seems that it takes something 

 mor-e than a fertile soil to produce great men ; a deep 

 and rich human soil is much more important. Ken- 

 tucky has been too far to one side of the main cur- 

 rent of our national life; she has felt the influence 

 of Kew England but very little ; neither has she been 

 aroused by the stir and enterprise of the great West. 

 Her schoolhouses are too far apart, even in this rich 

 section, and she values a fast trotter or racer more 

 than she does a fine scholar. 



