INTRODUCTION. 



For Special Reasons of Interest to the Reader, What Is Writ- 

 ten Here Should be Read First, and witl\ Care. / 



PRIOR to 1860, when I was first betrayed into giving some 

 special exhibitions in the art of taming horses, there was but 

 very little known on the subject, and what was known could 

 not be regarded as more than the merest empiricism. Indeed, I 

 had been under the impression myself at that time, that there was 

 some great secret, giftedness, scent, or medicines by which vicious 

 horses could be controlled and changed in character. This im- 

 pression had misled me greatly ; and it was only by long-continued 

 observation and practice that I was finally able, little by little, to 

 grasp the subject in its true aspect, and learn the real principles of 

 subduing and controlling vicious horses in a practically reliable 

 manner. 



The drift of my efforts and experiments which enabled me to 

 do this, extended over many years, and during the first decade were 

 necessarily but little more than a series of crude experiments, suc- 

 cess being constantly alternated with more or less failure ; and, in 

 fact, I was deeply interested in the study, and was far from exhaust- 

 ing it, when I left the road at the expiration of over nineteen years 

 of the most exacting experience before the public, and extending to 

 all the older-settled States of the country, But eVery failure, when 

 made, had been only the means of suggesting new points, revealing 

 to me new and more correct insight into the study, thereby carry- 

 ing me forward, and enabling me finally to accomplish results in the 



SUBJECTION OF SPECIALLY VICIOUS HORSES, 



which were not only a source of constant interest and surprise to 

 myself, but of astonishment to the best horsemen in the country 

 and the world, because of reducing the principles of controlling and 

 educating horses to the basis of an exact science, and not only rev- 

 olutionizing all previous ideas of the control and management of 

 horses, but saving fully eighteen-twentieths of the time usually re- 

 quired in their training, as well as making it entirely safe and 

 simple to do. The power to change, as if by magic, the character 

 of a horse that had perhaps defied all previous effort to be brought 

 3 (xvii) 



