LIFE WITH THE TROTTEKS. 269^ 



enougli to say about any horse m a country where people 

 go to see trotting races, as Favonia and Wedgewood have, 

 by their public performances stamped their family as first 

 class. Sprague Pilot, the third stallion at the Waters farm, 

 is by Governor Sprague, a horse who years ago electrified 

 the world not only by his extreme speed but by the beauty 

 of his gait and his wonderful intelligence coupled with a. 

 formation of legs, body, etc., that made him an animal 

 without a peer. On his dam's side Sprague Pilot may be 

 said to trace back to the Irish Kings, his first dam being by 

 Pilot Temple, a horse that needs no eulogy here, as hi& 

 public record has done all that for him, he being by Pilot 

 Jr., a horse whose daughters have produced two of the 

 grandest trotters the world ever saw, and back of all that 

 comes the dam of Flora Temple, the first horse that ever beat 

 2:20, and beyond that the thoroughbred cross that has 

 proven so valuable in the pedigree of a first-class trotter. 

 This shows to me more than anything else what a wide 

 interest the public takes in the trotting horse. When a gen- 

 tleman who has devoted his time entirely to business and 

 takes up the breeding of horses for pleasure or otherwise 

 can select with such excellent judgment a good combination 

 of the best strains of blood of performers, he cerl^inly must 

 have given the matter a great deal of thought and study. A, 

 man might hit the bull's-eye once by accident but he will 

 not shoot all day and keep hitting it unless he is a good shot. 



Hickok not only drove Eva to a world-wide reputation, 

 but after Stamboul, a son. of Sultan, had been beaten some 

 races last season took him in hand and very soon gave him 

 a mark of 2:14f. 



I noticed that Hickok in training members of the Sultan 

 family worked them differently from any other horses I 

 ever saw him handle. They always seemed to have their 

 speed, whether in condition or not. Hickok seemed to bend 

 all his energies to conditioning their body, legs, wind, etc., 

 and bringing them to the race fit in that manner. He often 

 told me that if a Sultan could trot he always had his trot' 



