98 MEMOIR. 



The Grand Circuit meeting in 1888 was the first at 

 which the average time for the trotting races was below 

 2 :20, as well as the one at which the saddle record of the 

 world for pacers was made, and the special between the 

 brothers Fred Folger and Guy. Johnston was started 

 on August 3 to reduce the record of 2:1414, which Billy 

 Boyce made at Buffalo, August 1, 1868, in a race with the 

 trotter Rolla Golddust. George Starr rode Johnston, and 

 made the mile in 2:13, the fractional time being 32/4, 

 33^4, 34, 33. The special race between the Kentucky 

 Prince geldings was unique only on account of the rela- 

 tionship of the performers, as Fred Folger could not trot 

 fast enough to exercise the black horse. The regular 

 events at the meeting were won by T. T. S., Bessemer, 

 Jack, J. B. Richardson, Arrow, Junemont, Lady White- 

 foot, Favonia, Mulatto, Prince Wilkes and Kinsman. In 

 the race won by Mulatto, G. Grimes started a gray mare 

 named Mella G. She finished behind the money. The 

 following week at Buffalo she was named to start against 

 the same horses as well as Cypress, Sprague Golddust, 

 Blue Grass Hambletonian, Harvester and B. B. Custer. 

 The race was programmed for the last clay of the meet- 

 ing, and as Grimes thought she did not have a chance, 

 he loaded her on the cars with his other horses to ship 

 to Rochester. Fasig, as he told me one morning while 

 riding in one of the bob-tailed horse cars which in those 

 clays ran from Willson Avenue to Glenville, took a fancy 

 to the gray and had a premonition that she could win. 

 When he learned that Mella G. was gone he rushed to the 

 freight yard, succeeded in trading $600 and Jessie Hays, 

 2 :2s, for her, borrowed a harness, boots and sulky, and 

 started. Spurred on by a little touch of superstition, 

 which at times permeated every fiber of Fasig's body, he 



