Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll
READY FOR THE PARK
I could cite many examples of his sweet intelligence. Once when a young woman upon a bicycle in Central Park was trying to ride us down, and going, as an unskilful bicyclist will do, in just the direction she wished to avoid, his efforts to keep out of her way, while at the same time putting me to as little inconvenience as possible, were charming—the horse evidently wondering whether a woman was a reasoning animal. One could teach him something one day in fifteen minutes, and the next day one could teach him as quickly just the contrary. When he first came on from Kentucky, where he had been single-footed, I found it hard to suggest a trot to him. I took him to a big mud-hole in the bridle-path in the park, and for some time worked him back and forth through it, evidently much perplexed as to what I wanted of him. In mud six inches deep he could not throw his foot out laterally, and had to bring it up vertically, and soon struck a trot. I patted him on the neck, and he stepped out cheerfully with an expression of, “Oh, is that what you want? I’d rather do that than the other.” He could trot in much less than three minutes, and so must have been trotting bred, but no thoroughbred had a better canter or gallop. And with all the qualities above enumerated, he was magnificently handsome. I gave the lady to whom I sold him the choice of two names, Casabianca, in allusion to his docility and devotion and because he would stand without hitching; and Solomon, because, as regarded his sense and intelligence, she would discover that the half had not been told her.
I think I have given pretty fairly the points of contrast between these two families of horses. In harness there can be no question that the trotter is the better. For use under saddle there is no doubt also that the American preference is for the trotter. But we have seen that the thoroughbred has his points of superiority as a saddle-horse. We should preserve the thoroughbred, improve him, if one likes, eliminate his undesirable qualities, but still preserve him. The saddle-horse of the future will combine the good qualities of the thoroughbred with those of the trotter.
[2] An animal, especially a horse, of pure blood, stock, or race; strictly, and as noting horses, a race-horse all of whose ancestors for a given number of generations (seven in England, five in America) are recorded in the stud-book. In America the name is now loosely given to any animal that is of pure blood and recorded pedigree, ... whose ancestry is known and recorded for five generations of dams and six of sires.—C. D.
SECRET WRITING
THE CIPHERS OF THE ANCIENTS, AND SOME OF THOSE IN MODERN USE
BY JOHN H. HASWELL
