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BLOOD TELLS IN HORSE AS WELL AS MAN Tlie southern writer of entertaining talcs Mrs Martha McCullochWilliams spins an interesting horse yarn in a letter to the New York Sun which though it has a great harness gaited horse as its chief figure soon runs into the sidelights of his great thoroughbred ancestry and adds something to southern thoroughbred history Here is Mrs Williams storyHeres story Heres a bit of reminiscence anent the breeding of Peter the Groat Octoroon from which he traces was a magnificent black animal noted for saddle l mlities personally and in his get but equally good in harness Indeed lie was a sort of king in the show ring where he was handled by his owner one Dick Madison a horseman born and made I saw the liorse repeatedly and understood him to be thoroughbred I have a nebulous impres ¬ sion that he traced to Ploughboy He was bred I think in south Kentucky the fat flat barrens coiisinsgerman to the prairies then and nnw nearly the finest farming lauds in the world The barrens were full of fine stock Many of the planters were noted breeders one of them Charles Edward Meriwether having mounted from his pad ¬ docks oii young thoroughbred a troop of cavalry raised among his neighbors and kinsmen The troop was with Morgan throughout the Hundred Days in Ohio OhioWhen When the coldbloods were staggering falling by the wayside the blood stock kept everlastingly at it without food almost without water and brought its riders safe back across the river After the wars close Mr Meriwether bought back from re ¬ turned soldiers several of the marcs he had given away saying lie wanted them as examples to his grandchildren df how blood will tell tellAfter After the war the Lexington strain became pre ¬ dominant bringing in the sorrel coat to supersede the blacks grays chestnuts and bays tracing to Vandal and American Eclinse My father had a gray sou of Eclinse the apple of his eye to whose early death tlie Civil War reconciled him as he knew the animal if living would have been seized by the Federals for mounting infantry After Feb ¬ ruary 18 2 ours was a Debatable Land whore horseflesh and cold cash were equally uncertain possessions possessionsIt It occurs to me the experience of Morgans men furnish a pointer for those who are interested in breeding proper mounts for cavalry It shows so conclusively what worth there is in the stay of the thoroughbred My father bred a colt whose rare pigeon blue coat marked him beyond mistake He was Doming four when war broke and was bought by a staff officer who carried him to the far south Of his army career we heard only shreds and tatters but in 67 the horse came back a battered wreck himself saddle marked scarred and galled beyond measure The homing instinct had brought him to the pastures of his birth He stayed with us severatmonths a free companion of the grass then was claimed by an owner from four hundred miles south who had bought him from a returning soldier had worked him through two crops and said he wouldnt part with him battered as he was for the best mule any man had
