296 TALES OF THE TURF. 



your passage with the whip, ride behind a dung-hill beast. 



The highest price ever paid for a horse, $105,000, was 

 paid for a trotter that was produced from a $150 mare, 

 and was bred, reared, trained and sold by a telegraph 

 operator. The general average paid for trotting-bred 

 horses is above the average paid for horses of other 

 classes. Then why, with the possibilities of extreme 

 value, and the certainty of a value above that of any 

 other breed, is not the trotting horse the horse for the 

 agriculturist to produce? He is the horse of to-day, and 

 the horse of the future. 



Much of the many theories advanced on how to breed 

 the trotting horse is good, a great deal bad — the old story 

 of the chaff and the grain. And let me say right here, if 

 you have not judgment of your own that can separate the 

 chaff from the wheat, don't start breeding trotters. Let 

 me hope, for your sake, that you can employ the "separ- 

 ator" to this article, for it undoubtedly contains much 

 chaff, and only possibly a very little sound grain that 

 might benefit you in saving, for I plead guilty, like my fel- 

 low men, of proneness to the equestrian feat of straddling 

 a hobby, and riding with whip and spur. The trotting 

 standard — a much reviled, and often a misleading guide, 

 acting in the minds of the unthinking men as a harmful 

 finger board that points in the wrong direction, and add- 

 ing a fictitious value to many a scrub not worth the water 

 it drinks — is still mainly the true guide to success in 

 breeding. It is far from perfect, all know, but, used with 

 judgment and intelligence, it will bring success, and suc- 

 cess "puts money in thy purse." 



It is true that there are many out of the standard rank 

 better than many that are in it. But that's where judg- 

 ment comes in. It is also true that it has no control over 



