A YANKEE TROTTER'S PEDIGREE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 36, 11 February 1880, Page 5

A YANKEE TROTTER'S PEDIGREE.

A writer in the Sportsniari thus chats pleasantly concerning the birth of a once famous American, trotter :— "About the time 1 refer to ther i. was a mare, an old one, a very -"poor "'doe, a grievous one to look at— sick, sdre, and sorry, but sound in wind ' aiid limb. She was turned out bn Harlem 1 Commons to nip the short grass, aiid take her chance to live or die. But she didn't die, for although she was a poor old mare she showed staying qualities on that common at least. At the same period there was an old grey Kentucky stallion of the wo_3t kind, and be picked up his grub around the same diggings, and was a kind of boss over all the animals who bad this temerity to trespass on his dom-iin. He was an independent Ro.inante in every way. He was the possessor of a hide that no iasect could penetrate, nor gadfly effect ; when you stopped leathering him he stopped going. Ail horae-flies, hornets, and other insects of that particular order gave him a wide berth, for they --had tried him, and no doubt- knew it wai ' love's labor lost' to tackle bis grey armour in the hope of, getting one drop of blood. You might as well aftampt to ram boiled peas through a stoto wall with a squirt as for a mosquito to make an entrance into that hide of his -—snd the old sinner appeared to know it, too. ■In hia formation he was an awful humble-looking cuss, big-headed, bull-necked, slab-sided, cat-hammed, parrot-toad, and no more action than a sickly snail, _or courage than a sloth. His gait was a sort of huckleberry trot; he would travel a very long time, and reach only a small dis-tance—-but, like that old mare, he was still sound in wind and limb, barring a f.w bunches about his fetlocks. The old cuss was not long io getting up an acquaintance with the mare, and one lovely Bu.mer. morning about eleven montbß after their meeting, one P hilly Helms, of Harlem, picked up a horde colt on that common, put it a wheelbarrow, and trundled it home. This emaciated specimen of a quadruped lived, and thrived under ttie fostering care of Phil; and before he was two years old he gave uotriistakeable evidence of being threatened with a tremendous turn of Bpe.d, and a gallact grey he turned out to be. A name was .elected and bestowed him, and he was -ever afterwards known as Harldm 'Boy—one of the fastest trotters of ; Bis day iii the States, T and in num.r'Qua da.hea and long trots Phil invariably rode him. At two years and a half old he beat Prinoe Albert. He also beat Firemaa, a firstrate horse at that time— mile 'heats, beat three in five. One of these heats in 2 coin 423-0. He cat down the then famous jßete.y Baker, Lady Clinton, -"■B.d 'RbMn, : Grey Medoo, Blind Boy , John Anderson, and many other good horses 1 ." The md.al of this story goes to Show thiit with sound parents (and sometimes unsound ones), it does not matter where a horsa is foaled, so long as there is good stuff in him to begin with, and that he is well roared, which was no doubt the case with Harlem Boy.