When we come to speak of disposition, the case against the thoroughbred is rather stronger. It cannot be denied that he is hot-tempered. That an animal should be used for generations for an exciting employment, and that employment an artificial one, must result, one would expect, in some eccentricity of temper. And the bad effects are rendered worse by certain necessary concomitants of the employment. It cannot be good for the temper of an animal two years old to be an hour getting away at the start, and to be whipped and spurred for the last hundred yards of every race. As a matter of fact, they are frequently as excitable and often as vicious as one might expect animals to be which had been subjected to such an experience. There is a thoroughbred stallion in Kentucky that has killed two grooms. It is said that an attempt, which for some reason was not successful, was made to put out his eyes in order that he could be handled with safety. A few years ago at Lexington I was told that a thoroughbred stallion at a stable near by had just taken two fingers off a groom’s hand. I went to the stable, had the animal brought out, and studied his countenance from a respectful distance, and he looked to me as though he could do it. The eye was somewhat ruthless, perhaps, but I should not say that the countenance was vicious or ill tempered. It had rather the opaque look of faces one will see behind the bars of a menagerie—faces unrelated to kindness or unkindness, and expressive only of the wish to survive and the readiness to perish in the struggle for existence. A few years ago we had in my native county, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, a celebrated performer on the turf, King Cadmus, which had killed at least one person. Once, when racing, he seized with his teeth a jockey on a horse that was passing him, threw him under his feet, and killed him. He was a lop-eared, rough-made brute, and if a man did not know him and took him for some harmless old screw, which might easily be possible, without any sign of ill temper he would allow the man to approach till he was in reach of his teeth, when he would try to seize him and throw him under his feet. Some of his colts are still about Greenbrier, and, strangely enough, do not seem to have inherited his vicious disposition,—an instance, I suppose, of failure to transmit acquired characteristics. I remember when a boy seeing Rarey leading about his celebrated Cruiser, which must have been very much such a horse as Cadmus. Possibly the animals I have mentioned might have been reformed if they had had such a handler as Rarey.
But these horses are exceptions, as it is hardly necessary to point out. A few years ago in Kentucky I rode for some weeks a four-year-old thoroughbred stallion that a child could have ridden, a very handsome bay, sixteen hands high, very fashionably bred (half-brother to Foxhall). He had been raced, but had not been found fast enough for the track. He was perfectly gentle. His only fault was not one of temper at all. He was a little sluggish, sluggishness being sometimes a fault of thoroughbreds. This fault affected his trot. A certain ambition and steady force in a horse are necessary to a comfortable trot.
But apart from the subject of gaits and disposition, it is claimed that the thoroughbred is inferior in style and beauty to certain other horses, such, for instance, as the Kentucky saddle-horse. That, of course, is a matter of taste, and tastes differ and change from time to time. I prefer the Kentucky horse myself, and believe him to be the handsomest horse in the world, and yet I find that when I go to England and live among people to whom the thoroughbred type seems perfection, I begin insensibly to see it as they do, and so I think will almost any one. There is no doubt that the type at its best is very beautiful. I have now in mind a chestnut mare, Miss Trix, which I saw at a pretty little show in the west of England summer before last and which afterward took the first prize at the international in London. A more beautiful creature it would be hard to find, or one better gaited or better mannered. And even when one sees this type in this country, where the taste and feeling are mostly on the side of the Kentucky horse, it is impossible to deny that it is beautiful. Three years ago at the State fair at Lexington I saw a class of thoroughbred stallions judged very early before the crowd was on the grounds. It was an extraordinary display of equine beauty that was gaily paraded before the stand on that bright and fragrant September morning, and, difficult as the choice seemed, the blue ribbon went deservedly to the most beautiful, a brown horse named Jack-pot. Later in the day I saw Jack-pot judged for the championship against the superbly handsome and universally accomplished chestnut stallion Bourbon King, the champion saddle-horse of Kentucky. The prize went to Bourbon King, and I myself should have so voted; but surely no one would propose that such a type of beauty as Jack-pot should be allowed to disappear from the earth.
ATHLETE. A COMBINATION TROTTING AND SADDLE BRED HORSE FROM GREENBRIER COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
There is one point in which the thoroughbred is doubtless superior to the Kentucky saddle-horse. I mean the shoulder. The fault of the Kentucky saddle-horse often is that he is thick in the shoulder. The Kentucky horse would be about perfect if one could give him the shoulder of the thoroughbred; yes, and if one could give him a little heavier bone. No doubt the Kentucky men would say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and since the Kentucky horse, as he now is, is about perfect in gaits, there is no occasion to change him. There is reason in this, and yet there are practical advantages in the thoroughbred shoulder. The rider grasps it with his knees more easily than a thicker shoulder. And for women who ride with a side-saddle a deep and slender shoulder and high withers are a necessity; they are needed to hold a side-saddle in place. If the horse is thick-shouldered, the groom must be continually getting off to tighten the girths, which thus have to be made so tight that the animal can scarcely breathe. And then, quite apart from its utility, there is no doubt of the beauty of the thoroughbred shoulder. It is beautiful whether you see it in Jack-pot or Miss Trix, or in some old screw of thoroughbred ancestry that pulls a grocer’s wagon. You will sometimes see about a stable a half-starved, uncared-for animal with a shoulder the memory of which will remain with you for years. That shoulder is entirely the property of the thoroughbred. You never see it except in a thoroughbred or a descendant of thoroughbreds. I do not know whence it comes. It does not appear to come from the Arab, from which are derived most of the characteristics of the thoroughbred. It can come only from the thoroughbred. For this reason I cannot agree with those critics who have opposed the recent action of the Kentucky saddle-horsemen in admitting to registration the product of Kentucky saddle-horses crossed with thoroughbreds. Of course it is to be hoped that breeders will choose those thoroughbreds that are without certain thoroughbred faults.
Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll
AWARDING THE BLUE RIBBON