appendij:. 48 s 



general shape of a thoroughbred mare of good bone. Like her 

 particular friends Dexter and Lady Thorn she was always one of 

 the wiry, whalebone sort, which can stand much work and thrive 

 under it. This sort of horse is like a steel spring, the harder you 

 bear upon it the greater is the force of the rebound when the let- 

 up comes. But besides being the smallest, the mare was the most 

 riotous and ungovernable of her family. All the tribe had wills 

 of their own, but she was particularly independent and given to 

 roaming. No fence ever kept her in the pasture when she 

 wanted to get out; she very often started soon after dark, and 

 made a night of it, galloping over the fields and leaping the 

 fences of her neighborhood. She ran wild, as one may say, until 

 she was nearly eight years old. She was once hitched to a har- 

 row, and fell into suoh a rage that she reared, fell over backward 

 and got her hind legs entangled in it. It was a perilous experi- 

 ment, and they did not try it again. She was a few times in 

 harness, but there were fear and trembling as they put her to, and 

 many oaths while they chased her with boys and dogs when she 

 had broken loose, as she almost always did. So she grew up 

 wild as Ja Ja Jumbo's men in the Bight of Biafra, arid like 

 Dexter and Lady Thorn she was an accomplished runaway, when 

 sold at eight years old to Mr. Decker's nephew for $350. On his 

 road home he met with William Thompson, otherwise Jersey 

 Bill, who bought her for $460. This was in January 1865. In 

 the following March she was purchased of Thompson for |650 

 and a buggy by Mr. Alden Goldsmith, of Walnut Grove Farm, 

 Orange county. It was the crisis of her fate. The hour had 

 come and the man I He quieted her, induced her to become 

 gentle without any abatement of spirit, and made a trotter of her. 

 It was in one of my visits to his spacious and beautiful pla »e, the 

 home of Volunteer, a very valuable and famous horse by Ham- 

 bletonian, that I first saw Goldsmith Maid. She was then almost 

 unknown to fame, and had not, I think, received her name. In 

 company with the sagacious and estimable owner of the pla.ie, I 



