148 MEMOIR. 



Columbian free-for-all at Washington Park, Chicago, dur- 

 ing the World's Fair. In the first heat of that race Alix 

 and Pixley finished heads apart in 2:07^4. Hulda broke 

 down in the fourth heat and Alix won the money after 

 a three days' siege, Beuzetta, at the time an unknown two- 

 year-old filly, as wild-eyed as a startled fawn, was bid off 

 for $500 and shipped back to Kentucky. The following 

 year she won the Kentucky Futurity worth $27,480, and in 

 her four-year-old form was invincible until she met Azote 

 at Fleetwood Park, New York. At that time she had a 

 record of 2:0634, but when Azote was turned loose he 

 stepped away from her' and won in 2 :ogy 2 , 2\o$y 2 , 2 107. 

 Early in 1893 the financial depression stuck a pin in the 

 boom prices which were being paid for trotting race stock. 

 Many buyers and breeders had been looking for it for 

 some time and had their houses in order, John E. Madden 

 being one of the first to come out boldly and state that a 

 pedigree without the individual was worthless. Opposed 

 to him and others, who read the signs of the times cor- 

 rectly, was an army of buyers and breeders who con- 

 tended that so long as a standard bred horse by a fashion- 

 able sire could command a service fee of from $100 to 

 $300, and double that figure if he had a fast record and 

 two or three colts in the 2 130 list, there was money in the 

 business even with the prices in the thousands. And 

 there was, so long as the trotter was a plaything and there 

 were men who would book mares at top figures, but they 

 disappeared as soon as they found that when they wanted 

 a little money they could not realize as much for the colt 

 as the service fee of its sire, to say nothine of the keep 

 and the interest on the monev invested in the mare. This 

 fact, backed by the hard times, put a crimp in the market, 

 and in a short time hundreds wanted to sell, and while 



