TROTTING HORSES. 67 
of excitement at being challenged by some tip-top 
goer, she would, to use a sportman’s phrase, ‘travel 
over herself’ and go ‘up’ into the air, she was stead- 
ied and settled down by a firm rein into solid trotting 
and good behavior in an instant. The crazy, flighty, 
half-racking, and half-trotting little bay mare became 
a true stepper, and very luckily passed out of her 
confused ‘ rip-i-ty clip-i-ty’ sort of going into a clean, 
even, long, low, locomotive-trotting stroke. Many a 
man who came up to a road tavern, after having been 
unexpectedly beaten by her, would say to her owner, 
as they took a drink at the bar, ‘That’s a mighty 
nice little mare of yours, and if she was only big 
enough to stand hard work, you might expect a good 
deal from her.” 
But Flora Temple was big enough, as her subse- 
quent career proved. Little horses, in fact, usually 
make the best weight-pullers and stand the most 
work. Hopeful, whose time to a skeleton wagon for 
a mile, 2.164, made in 1878, remained the best on 
record till 1891,! was a small gray horse, and, like 
almost all weight-pullers, a very short and quick 
stepper. “If little horses of this sort be particu- 
larly examined,” says a high authority, “it will com- 
monly be found that, though they are low, they are 
long in all the moving parts; and their quarters are 
generally as big and sometimes a deal bigger than 
those of many much larger horses.” This remark 
would apply to Arab coursers, who, although their 
muscles are great, rarely stand above 14? hands ; and 
1 In the autumn of 1891, Allerton (a grandson of George Wilkes 
and of Mambrino Patchen) trotted a mile to wagon on a kite- 
shaped track in 2.15. 
