enough to have won the race easily if he had not been 

 thus handicapped. The best time, I think, in this race 

 was about 2.40. The day of that race I refused $1,000 

 for him, as I thought I had a world-beater. But I 

 gained some costly experience by this refusal, as after 

 keeping him and training him a year or two longer 

 I sold him for S300. His keeping and handling cost 

 me all the money I had made on the other horses. 

 This experience made me think I did not know as 

 much about conditioning and handling racehorses as I 

 supposed I did a few months previous ; but this sad 

 experience was not without its compensations, as it 

 taught me that it seldom pays to try and make a 

 fast trotter out of a natural pacer, as the weight re- 

 quired to make them trot is so great as to create too 

 much of a handicap to enable them to compete with 

 natural trotters. I am aware that there are exceptions 

 to this rule ; the most prominent, perhaps, is that of 

 Old Smuggler, a natural pacer who carried about two 

 pounds of weight on each fore foot during his trotting 

 races, and although he and some other natural pacers 

 have made successful trotting race horses, yet my ex- 

 perience and observation is that as a rule the horse 

 will do much better if allowed to go his natural gait. 

 About the time I sold this horse, Mr. George Fuller, 

 now in the employ of the Russian Government as 

 chief trainer of its trotting horses, opened a training 

 stable at Nashville, and among the horses he was 

 handling, was a mare called Tennessee, which he was 

 preparing for the Northern circuit. She was a fast 

 trotter. I arranged with him to go along and take 

 care of her. This was my first experience in taking 

 lessons of a competent man in preparing horses for a 

 campaign. I regard Mr. Fuller as one of the very 



