Charles Marvin's Chapter. 



TRAINING TROTTING COLTS 



After some hesitancy, I have decided to comply with the 

 request of Mr. Feek, the author of this work, and contribute 

 a short chapter on training colts to trot, illustrated with a 

 brief resume of the preparation that enabled the famous 

 Sunol to twice eclipse the two-year-old record of the world. 

 My hesitancy, at first, in deciding to comply with Mr. Feek's 

 invitation was due to several objections that suggested them- 

 selves to my mind. First, as is pretty generally known, I am 

 myself about to embark on the uncertain sea of authorship, 

 and will shortly submit to the consideration and judgment of 

 American horsemen an exhaustive work on " TRAINING THE 

 Trotting Horse," in which the Palo Alto system of devel- 

 oping colt trotters will be carefully and fully treated in every 

 detail. Being so engaged, the thought naturally suggested 

 itself that perhaps I owed it to myself to give my sole atten- 

 tion to my own literary venture. Secondly, I realized, es- 

 pecially after some months of work on the forthcoming book, 

 how impossible it is to write satisfactority of a whole s\\stem 

 of training in a single chapter. To give)'ou an adequate idea 

 of a method of training, such as that practiced at Palo Alto, 

 is only possible in a good-sized volume — and, of course, had I 

 been able to treat it in a chapter or two I would never have 

 thought of writing a book. Still another objection was that 

 this chapter has to be written at very short notice — but 

 against all these objections m\' desire to accommodate the 

 genial and gentlemanly Syracuse trainer has prevailed. Some 

 who may never see it fully explained in my book, ma}- have 



