“These facts being true, it is evident that the pacer is not a scrub. If he is a scrub, then we are forced to the conclusion that nothing in all the breeding world may be likened to the intensity of his cold-bloodedness. This scrub blood overcomes the hot running blood, though continually diluted for successive generations; and it needs only a little of it to knock out the hopes of the bluest blooded trotter descended from Hambletonian lines. If he is a scrub, then he is the veritable ‘original sire’ of the scrub horse business, which, like that in man, is ever on top. But as this sin of the pacer helps him to the wire first, and has given him the harness records of the world, we trust no trotting moralist will attempt to entirely obliterate it. We don’t need any crucifixions there! To our mind, we believe that if the curtain of the past could ever be unrolled upon the pacers of old we would find that centuries ago he was bred for no other way of going, and bred so long and so purely and so consistently that in him has been planted an instinct that will never be obliterated. To argue that a cold-blooded horse can be thus preponent is to argue against the well-known laws of heredity!

“In the second place, the pacer has undoubtedly come to stay. The American people are nothing if not quick in realizing real merit and honoring it when clearly proven. As they make no pretensions to the shams of royalty, so are they not bound by the iron rules of court custom from ‘hustling’ to horse-racing. They do not care for so much trappy action; nor does the matter of a banged tail cut as much of a figure in their calculations as does the intense patriotism which lies within them for their own almighty dollar. Passing over the generally admitted fact that the pacer is naturally faster than the trotter, comes to his speed more quickly, may be more evenly matched in a race, and is preserved longer by reason of the smoothness of his gait, there is yet another cause why the pacer is destined to become more popular.

“A great English commoner, whose ire had been aroused on one occasion by a member of the House of Lords, in reply, in a speech of burning oratory, spoke of the aforesaid gentleman as being in his titled position merely by reason of the fact that he was ‘the accident of an accident.’ There is no doubt that Hambletonian 10, the present head of the trotting family, was even more of an accident than the English lord was. Bellfounder mares of trotting propensities were rarer than imported Messengers, and if the mating of Abdallah with this mare was not an accident, but the plan of a thoughtful intellect looking to the future, the descendants of the man who thought it out should have risen up and told it last month, that their forefathers might have been honored along with Columbus at the opening of the World’s Fair. Now the ‘trotting-bred pacer’ is quite an accident himself. He is here by reason of the fact that many trotting breeders in their wild vagaries and theories regarding the best way to breed a trotter, ranging all the way, in the theory of breeding, from thoroughblood to jackass, have accidentally honored a few thousand pacing mares with a service to some of their Hambletonians. As a result the ‘trotting-bred’ pacer is with us. As it is quite impossible for the trotting turf to get rid of this rascal if they wished to, and as he has managed to be quite a game and fast money-making machine himself, he has clinched the popularity of the pacer as a pacer and has stuck a peg in the map of popular favor that would be hard to be removed.

“And it is safe to say that by reason of the blood of Pilot, Jr., Clay, Blue Bull, Tom Hal, Pocahontas and many others being so generally distributed in the pedigrees of trotters, the ‘trotting-bred pacer’ will continue to come from such trotting sources in the future in geometrical proportion and to pace in the same ratio. What will be done with them? Each one, with speed, is simply a money-making machine, and his owner will not be long in putting him at the work which nature cut out for him. To destroy him merely because he paces belongs to the dark ages when the pacing gait was one which made no money, but now, since the pacing purses have gotten to be so liberal and getting more so each year, it is only common sense to suppose that owners of pacing horses will begin to take more pains in their development and their breeding. This will improve their speed. As it is now, we do not suppose there is a betting horseman alive who would not give large odds that the pacer will be the first two-minute horse.

“And in this connection another thing must be taken into consideration. The pacer’s gait has itself been greatly improved in the last ten years. He is no longer the rotary-motioned mud-flinger of old, whose forefeet pawed the air in circles parallel with and above his ears, while his hind feet described semicircles over the ground, but he is now a smooth-gaited, straightforward, quick-actioned fellow, with plenty of knee action in front and the stride of a bullfrog behind, and at his highest speed it requires more than a glance for one to say whether he is trotting or pacing. In other words, the pacer has come to be a well-rounded, symmetrical and well-bred horse. His gait is the poetry of harness motion, his courage is unquestioned and his staying qualities, especially with the pacing-bred ones, of whom we are more familiar, are equal to those of any horse that ever stretched his neck in the home stretch. In view of these facts it doesn’t require even the grandson of a prophet to predict he is destined to a still greater career on the light harness race course.

“We can only judge the future by the past and the present, and with that in view from a study of the 2:20 list, which a most exclusive list in the light harness race course, we are startled with the enviable position the despised side-wheeler holds in that charmed circle this season. There can be no sham in the 2:20 list. A horse must be able to trot or pace that enters it. Up to November 15 there were, according to the statistics at my command, 189 new 2:20 performers; and by new performers we mean horses that had no record as good as 2:30 trotting or 2:25 pacing before the opening of this season. Of these 189 new 2:20 performers we find that the pacers constitute 128 of the number, while the trotters are credited with sixty-one. This table includes but seven pacers that have lowered their records from the 2:30 list last year to the 2:20 list this year, and we use it to get at the number of green horses to enter this list, and from it we are able to form a more correct idea of the material coming fresh from both ranks. It cuts off such stars as Kremlin, Stamboul and Nancy Hanks among trotters, as well as Hal Pointer, Mascot, Guy, Direct and Storm among pacers.

“But a still more exclusive list is the 2:15 class, and in order to show your readers what has been accomplished by the new material from the pacing ranks this year as compared with the same material from the trotters, we publish that list in full, and in a spirit of generosity we place the despised pacer on the left in the goat’s place. The fact that it looks something like the last electoral college, with Cleveland on the pacer’s side, need not lead any one to think we are at all partisan in this matter.

“New pacers with records of 2:15 or better:

Flying Gib2:05¾
Jay-Eye-See2:06¼
W. Wood2:07
Robert J.2:09¾
San Pedro2:10¾
Wisconsin King2:11
Online 22:11
Walnut Boy2:11½
Ella Brown2:11¼
Cleveland S2:11¾
Prima Donna2:11¾
Colbert2:12¼
Dandy O2:12½
Charley Ford2:12½
La Belle2:12½
John R. Gentry2:12¾
Gilileo Rex2:12¾
Expert Prince2:13¼
Fleetfoot2:14
Henry O2:14
Eclectic2:14
To Order, 22:14
Rebus2:14¼
Clint Cliff2:14½
Joe Jett2:14½
Chris Smith2:14½
Lydia Wilkes2:14½
Diabolo2:14¾
Merry Chimes2:14¾
Nuthurst2:14¾
Bob2:15
Alhambra2:15
Blondine2:15
Wardell2:15

“New trotters with records of 2:15 or better: