old Hotspur began to tire, and I easily won the heat, 

 and won the race, and felt that I had been revenged 

 for the ill treatment I had received the day before. I 

 also won two or three other races at that meeting. 



In 1884, I purchased Joe Braden, then a green horse, 

 that showed a good way of going under the saddle, and 

 when I took him his feet were in a very bad condition, 

 by reason of which he developed speed very slowly ; 

 but I believed if I could get his feet in condition to 

 stand work he would learn to pace fast. I resorted to 

 every device within my knowledge and spent many 

 sleepless hours trying to invent something that would 

 sufficiently protect his feet to enable him to endure 

 the hardships of racing. My efforts were at last suc- 

 cessful, and he became a good horse, and in his pre- 

 paratory work, one spring, paced a quarter of a mile to 

 a high-wheeled sulky, over the old, uneven, fair ground 

 track at Columbia, in thirty-one seconds. I cam- 

 paigned him through the North in 1885 and 1886, and 

 gave him a record of 2.15^. He developed into a 

 first-class race horse, and except for his tender feet, 

 which would occasionally cause him to suffer so much 

 pain that he would not extend himself and would 

 break, he would have been one of the best race horses 

 of his day. In the fall of 1886 I took my stable 

 South, and at Gainsville, Texas, entered Joe Braden 

 in the free-for-all pace. The track was very hard, 

 which caused Braden to be unsteady, but I think I 

 would have won the race had not Braden left his feet 

 in the second heat, which caused him to lose that heat. 

 After this heat the judges took me out of the sulky, 

 and put up a new driver, which did not improve mat- 

 ters, as the horse was more unsteady than ever, and, 

 with the best efforts the driver could command, Joe 



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