The history of racing in this country teaches over and over again that whenever the breeding and racing interest falls into the control of gamblers, down goes the whole interest and honest men suffer with the rogues. The grasping track managers are to-day complaining loudly that they cannot afford to give trotting meetings unless they are allowed to bring in the pool-sellers and make them divide the “swag” with the track. Every attempt by legislatures to make gambling on races a felony outside the race track and a virtue inside is a most arrant humbug and most destructive in its results. It makes the race track a cesspool of every vice, and a stench in the nostrils of every honest man and decent woman. The moral sense of the people all over this country is being aroused, and if public gambling cannot be suppressed on horse races, then history will repeat itself and horse racing will be wiped out. The gamblers and their friends will sneer at this as “puritanism,” but no difference about the name—it will come. But, destructive and ruinous as gambling on races may be to the life and moral character of young men, as well as to the material interests of honest and reputable breeders, it hardly comes within my province to discuss it further in this place, and therefore I will return to the consideration of the pacer. As the historical periodicity is now looming in sight when the moral sense of the people will command the suppression of racing of every kind, the question becomes exceedingly pertinent as to what is to become of the pacer? He will no longer be of any value as a gambling machine, the days of the saddle horse are past as a means of travel, except by a few about the parks of the cities, and however uppish and handsome he may be, he is not and never will be a desirable driving horse in harness. We have already used sufficient of his blood to create the American Saddle Horse, and if the saddle horse shall produce “after his kind” we need no more infusions from the pure pacer. In the trotter his blood has leavened everything, and in some lines more than we desire or need. He has been a great source of trotting speed, and if, as I am inclined to believe, Messenger’s power to transmit trotting speed came from the old English pacer, then the pacer is the only source of that speed. Under the condition of things as here foreshadowed he will probably sink back into the obscurity from which he emerged twenty years ago. CHAPTER XV. THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE. The saddle gaits come only from the pacer—Saddle gaits cultivated three hundred years ago—Markham on the saddle gaits—The military seat the best—The unity of the pace and trot—Gaits analyzed—Saddle Horse Register—Saddle horse progenitors—Denmark not a thoroughbred horse.