SADDLE HORSES. 159 
This quality of springiness or elasticity is almost, 
if not quite, the most important one that a saddle 
horse can possess. Certainly as regards road riding, 
an elastic trot, whether long or short, is the best gait 
for pleasure or for exercise, or for accomplishing a 
distance. No attention whatever has been paid dur- 
ing the past fifty years to the production of a Mor- 
gan saddle horse, but the breed still contains the 
material for a quick-stepping, tough, and showy ani- 
mal very well adapted for city and suburban use, — 
what is called in England a “hack.” Riding in the 
rural districts of New England —and this is true in 
almost equal degree of the Middle, and perhaps also 
of the Northwestern States—is nearly a lost art. 
There are whole townships where it would be hard to 
find a saddle, unless it were some antiquated, moth- 
eaten contrivance, covered with cobwebs and stowed 
away in a hay-loft. 
The equine interests of New England, Boston ex- 
cepted, all centre in the trotter. But this was not so 
formerly. Wherever ten men of Anglo-Saxon blood 
are gathered together, there will be found two at least 
who love horses, and to whom trials of speed between 
horses soon become a necessity. The passion for 
trotters set in early in the present century, but before 
that horse racing was common in the Eastern States, 
as elsewhere; and well-bred horses from Canada were 
often imported for riding and racing purposes. To 
this fact, indeed, is due much of the best roadster 
blood in New England. The Drew family thus arose, 
and some of the swiftest, handsomest branches of the 
Morgan family derive, on the maternal side, from 
well bred mares of English stock brought from Canada 
and the Provinces. 
