126 THE TROTTINO-HORSE OT AMERICA. 



When Capt. Moore offered to put Idlewild into a state 

 against George Wilkes, Lady Emma, Gen. Butler, or any 

 other trotters that might choose to enter, the old mare 

 to go four miles while the trotters or any one of them went 

 three, he relied upon the notion that riders of the right 

 weight could not be found to ride the trotters. In England 

 they formerly had an idea that weight made hut little, 

 difference to a trotter, and that a light-weight was not 

 calculated for the trotting action. Thus it wiU be found, 

 that, in many of the old English trotting-matches, the 

 horses carried as much as 168 pounds, even when they were 

 made catch-weight. This was never our opinion in America, 

 as the doings at Baltimore with Lady Kate showed ; but 

 there was this truth about the notion — it was better to 

 carry the weight with a good rider that could last all the 

 way, than to put up a light boy who could do nothing after 

 the first two or three mUes but just sit on the horse. 



The trotting-horse, to do his work well under saddle, has 

 got to be extended so as ^o go with ease to himself and 

 without danger of breaks. A very considerable pull is often 

 required ; and some of those which are not " pullers,'' in the 

 language of horsemen, would be thought by an amateur to 

 have a great deal of weight on the bit by the time they had 

 gone two miles. They are seldom to be found without a 

 disposition to pull somewhere in the race ; and, with a very 

 light boy on the back of them, it would probably be all over 

 then. I find, in looking back at an old English book with 

 which I sometimes amuse myself, that, when Robson's 

 mare trotted seventeen miles in fifty-three minutes, she was 

 ridden by a boy out of the racing-stables, who could ride a 

 trotter, and only weighed about seventy pounds. Now, this 

 mare could not have been a puller, and in that particular, 

 with ability to go a distance, it would be hard to find one 

 like her. Still I venture to say that it would be easier to 

 find such a mare than such a boy. I was light when I rode 

 Lady Kate and Paul Pry, but not so light as that by a great 



