180 MEMOIR. 



A HORSEMAN. 



New York, N. Y., Oct. 28, 1902. — William B. Fasig's 

 success in the horse business, and he certainly made a 

 success, was due not so much to business methods or atten- 

 tion to details, or thorough familiarity with pedigrees, as 

 to his appreciation of the merits of the horse himself as 

 an individual ; his quick eye for gait and action ; his knowl- 

 edge of what it took to make a race horse or a gentleman's 

 road horse ; his frankness in telling a customer what he 

 knew or believed, and his ability to express his opinion 

 in a pleasant and straightforward manner. 



With him there was no horse but the trotter, except 

 for commercial purposes, and he purposely limited his 

 thought, his study and his conversations (about horses) to 

 the animal that he loved. He would talk for hours with 

 a horseman about a good trotter, if he had not seen him 

 himself and believed him good, and refuse to discuss busi- 

 ness involving thousands of dollars, simply saving, "I 

 am engaged; get Tipton to attend to that." 



His hobbies were team trotting and wagon racing, and 

 I never saw a man who could beat him selecting two trot- 

 ters to go together. Few men, very few, if any, could 

 beat him hitching a pair of fast horses, and those who 

 could beat him driving them after he had hitched them, 

 could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Consider- 

 ing his weight, he was one of the very best drivers to 

 wagon that I ever saw, and I have seen most of them. Yet, 

 with all this knowledge and good judgment, he had his 

 weak side with horses, and, strange to say, that weakness 

 was his lack of nerve in buying, his fear of paving out 

 big money for what his judgment told him to buy, and 

 that alone kept him from being a very rich man. 



