A good many years ago I made a special study of all that had been written about Messenger, and I was fortunate in being able to supplement this information by interviews with a few old gentlemen who knew the horse personally. Nearly all that generation of horsemen had passed away before I commenced this personal search for them. But a few then remained with excellent memories and with characters above suspicion or reproach. From these sources I gathered a great many incidents, facts and descriptions which I succeeded in harmonizing, to my own mind at least, and thus was able, to compile a complete description of the horse at every point. That description was written out more than twenty years ago, and in presenting it now I will not change a single word. At the time it was written, as will be seen from its perusal, I had really no doubt the horse was thoroughbred. It will not be charged, therefore, that the coarse traits brought out in the description were influenced in any degree by a theory of his breeding: “Messenger was a grey, that became lighter and flea-bitten with age. He was fifteen hands three inches high, and for a thoroughbred his appearance was coarse. He did not supply the mind with an idea of beauty, but he impressed upon it a conception of solidity and power. His head was large and bony, with a nose that had a decided Roman tendency, though not to a marked degree. His nostrils were unusually large and flexible, and when distended they were enormous. His eye was large, full, very dark and remarkably brilliant. In this particular he does not appear to have inherited the weakness of his great-grandsire, Sampson. His ear was larger than usual in the blood horse, but thin and tapering and always active and expressive. The windpipe was so unusually large and stood out so much as a distinct feature that it marred what otherwise would have been a gamelike throat-latch and setting on of the head. His neck was very short for a blood horse, but was not coarse and thick like a bull’s; neither did it rise into such an enormous crest as that of his sire. It was not a bad neck in any sense, but like Lexington’s of our own day, it was too short to be handsome. His mane and foretop were thin and light. His withers were low and round, which appears to have been a family characteristic in the male line, back for three generations at least. His shoulders were heavy and altogether too upright for our ideas of a race horse. His barrel was perfection itself, both for depth and rotundity. His loin was well arched, broad and strong. His hips and quarters were ‘incomparably superior to all others.’ The column of the vertebra being of unusual depth and strength, gave the setting on of the tail a distinctive, but elegant character. The tail was carried in fine style; like the mane, it was not in superabundant quantity, but there was no such scantiness as to detract from the beauty and grace of the animal.