THE TROTTING-EORSE OF AMERICA. 169 



years old, and that he had no training to undergo until he 

 was seven. Does anybody think that he would have been a 

 sound, fast, strong horse at eighteen, if he had been put 

 through the mill of hard training, high trials, and severe 

 races at three or four ? It is the " grand preparation " and 

 the screwing-up in the high trial that take away the steel 

 and life of the young horses. Very often the race itself is 

 an easy one for the winner; but the mischief has been 

 done before the race was come to, and the young horse is 

 seriously damaged, if not ruined for life. A horse like 

 Dutchman does twenty times more hard work as a trot- 

 ter, than twenty of the early, hard-trained, tried, and raced 

 ones can ever do ; and it don't hurt him one bit. 



Some will say the comparison is not fair : Dutchman was 

 a very extraordinary horse. I answer so he was ; but, if 

 you want one approaching his excellence in all points, don't 

 you go to stuffing your colts with bruised oats and oatmeal 

 before they are weaned, and ramming them up to the full 

 extent of their powers, in training, trials, and the like, at 

 three years old. I know that the man who has got a three- 

 year-old flyer or two to sell at a high price wiU call these sad, 

 old-fogy notions, say that I am behind the age, and that 

 the early system is the thing. So it is for Mm, because he 

 is going to sell the colt that has been hurried along to an 

 unnatural and fleeting precocity ; and when he has been 

 sold, and the nine days' wonder of the big price has passed 

 away, that is probably the last we shall ever hear of the colt, 

 and the seller will have one more of the same sort, or may 

 be as fast and younger, to dispose of next year. But you 

 want to produce, if possible, one that in the course of time — 

 time, that tries all — shall earn a solid and enduring reputa- 

 tion as a good trotter ; therefore foUow the old racing maxim, 

 " Wait and win." 



You wiU have to be at the expense of some money and 

 more patience in the extra year or two that must elapse be- 



