What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of America beat the world?  And why should we have expected that the pick—­if it was the pick—­of our few and far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and France?  Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to.

We may beat yet.  As an American, I hope we shall.  As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it.  Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers’ carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher’s wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child,—­all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh.  The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues.

And by the way, let me beg you not to call a trotting match a race, and not to speak of a “thorough-bred” as a “blooded” horse, unless he has been recently phlebotomized.  I consent to your saying “blood horse,” if you like.  Also, if, next year, we send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of the great national four-mile race in 7 18-1/2, and they happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how.

[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper condensed in the above paragraph.  To brag little,—­to show—­well,—­to crow gently, if in luck,—­to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can’t say that I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.]

——­Apropos of horses.  Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors?  Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein;—­this is what I mean by jockeying.

——­When an author has a number of books out, a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up, as it begins to “wabble,” by an advertisement, a puff, or a quotation.

——­Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming.  The extracts are ground-bait.