VI EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



recognized his strong, original turn of thought, and 

 painstaking anxiety to make it eminently practical and 

 useful. During its composition, there were some de- 

 lays caused by the great application necessary on the 

 part of the author to his business as trainer and 

 driver of horses. He had sometimes as many as 

 twenty in his charge ; and he felt that at such periods 

 he could not, with justice to the work itself and to 

 them, continue its composition. 



To suggestions that the public was eager for the 

 book, and wanted it completed early, he commonly 

 replied that he wanted it completed well. There was, 

 he said, no more reason for hurrying out this, his only 

 work, than there would be in his hurrying on the edu- 

 cation of a horse that he deemed certain to make a 

 trotter. He was no believer in the " forcing " pro- 

 cess, and always contended that the book would be 

 ail the better for the extra time he had resolved to 

 devote to it. Nothing could exceed his anxiety to 

 avoid any thing that by misapplication might be mis- 

 chievous. He was eminently a man of clear, strong 

 views, and of few, terse words. Many of the most 

 valuable and well-tried conclusions of his genius and 

 experience will be found set down in his literal 

 words in a very few lines. I have never met with a 

 man who was so quick and direct in coming at the 

 kernel of a question, and who threw away the husk 

 and shell so promptly as utterly worthless. 



Just before his last illness, the materials for the com 



