than any other of his kind. His mentality is higher, his courage greater." Who is this thoroughbred? He was never beaten in the royal contests on the turf, and since his retirement his sons and daughters have grown up and kept his fame green and his achievements fresh, in our minds. Ormonde was born nine years ago in England. He was bred by the Duke of Westminster. After a brilliant career as a three- and four-year-old, having won the Derby and St. Leger, fabulous sums, for mere horseflesh it would seem, were offered, when an American, William O'Brien McDonough, of California, bid $150,000 for Ormonde, and he became his property-the greatest sum ever paid for a stallion. Ormonde is now at Mr. McDonough's breeding establishment, and he is fitted out with the garb and luxuries of an imperial master, which he is. He has his grooms-his head groom, second groom, and his personal attendant. "His wardrobe," says his valet, "would make a prima donna weep with envy. There are all kinds and degrees of wraps of the finest and whitest linen. His blankets are of the finest lamb's wool. There are tan-colored blankets and hoods for cold weather; white rubber mackintoshes for wet weather; all manner of rubbing towels, dusters, white and tan-colored cloths for bandages, and square blue and white padded flannel knee covers for use in walking exercises. His medicine chest contains draughts, tonics, stimulants and medicines of all sorts put up by the most celebrated of London veterinaries." He has traveled over 20,000 miles, profiting by his wide range of experience, as he is an intelligent, kindly creature, unspoiled by his fame and petting-majestic to look at, standing 16.1 hands high and pronounced by experts the grandest thoroughbred now alive. Next to Ormonde comes the celebrated thoroughbred-a Derby winner-the world-famed St. Blaise, sold by Easton, the auctioneer, at Tattersall's, in West Fifty-fifth Street, to Charles Reed, a few months ago, for $100,000. St. Blaise was bred by Lord Arlington in 1880, winning the Stockbridge Centennial Stakes and Troy Stakes, following his victories up by his crowning triumph on the English turf, backed by the Prince of Wales and his set by very heavy wagers. August Belmont imported him to the United States and sent him to the Nursery Stud in Kentucky, where he sired many distinguished racers. At Fairview Farm, where he now is, in Kentucky, he has at tendants to minister to every want. His food is the finest and the purest the earth produces; and this rich chestnut stallion, with a blaze face and three white legs, which he transmits to his offspring, is one of the glories of our time. A mere mention of others is all that can be attempted here. The youngest is Domino, at this writing but two years old. During the past season alone he has won $200,000 in purses. He is the property of James R. Keene, who bought him as a yearling for $3,000; and his present record. is that he won every race in which he started save one. This horse is of glossy black, standing 15.3 hands high, somewhat ungainly in appearance, although into what lines he will develop time alone can tell. Then comes Nancy Hanks, in everybody's mouth, beautiful to look upon, dark bay, 15 hands high. She is the queen of trotters, the property of J. Malcolm Forbes & Co., Boston, and valued at $75,000. Directum, at the apex of fame, with a record of 2:05, calls on Nancy Hanks to lower her colors. He is a stallion, 15.2 hands high, foaled in 1889, owned by his breeder, John Green, of Dublin, Cal. He is now, therefore, five years old, and his last defeat of the champion pacer Mascot adds to his already startling performances in changing the record of the turf. Beyond these phenomenal animals, American racing annals are rich in conspicuous colts, stallions and mares who have held the public enchantment, leaving historic names behind them. as widely known as those of great generals, statesmen, or sturdy seamen flying the admiral's pen-nant at the fore. Robert Bonner, of the Ledger, for more than thirty years has been the foremost buyer, and promoter of the domestic uses, of the ablest flyers on the road, and his example, although it may to many smack of the ultra Ulster severity of the North of Ireland roundheads, has at least widened and deepened the love of horses, contributed vastly to the elevation of the turf,. and shown to canting hyprocrisy and doughfaced fanaticism that one can be a devout Christian religionist of an austere sect, and yet admire and cultivate beauty, proportion, power and wondrousspeed in the noble animal. Maud Sand Dexter in his stables, St. Julien, Ontario, Montreal, the prince of ponies Rosarium, Bonfire, and Lauderdale, the champion handsome lady's saddle horse, 15 hands high-these are some of the "feature" horses, in their various special gifts well worthy to be mentioned here. The work of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded by Henry Bergh and now under the active presidency of John P. Haines, has become national in scope, and the number of subsidiary organizations is rapidly multiplying. Its headquarters, at No. 100 East Twenty-second Street, occupies a full brownstonehouse, where the staff, general officers and clerical force are comfortably installed. From this point suitable literature, embraced in such publications. as the monthly periodicals, Our Animal Friends, Kindness to Animals, and the annual Reports, are sent broadcast over the Union. Here is the record of its operations in brief during its twentyseven years of existence in New York, having now a property valued at $300,000: Cases prosecuted in the courts... pioneers in a good cause-he nevertheless did a noble and lasting work in this metropolis; and its reflex action in Europe-indeed, everywhere on the globehas marked a new era in the treatment of the lower animals, while the beneficent influence of his intelligent purpose and firm hand are indeed amazing when we stop and consider the kindness and consideration shown to quadrupeds compared with the fashion of twenty years ago. This society is now doing more, as it has done during its existence, to minimize and ultimately eliminate brutality to animals than Disabled animals temporarily suspended from work.53,986 Horses disabled past recovery, humanely destroyed. 37,629 Small animals destroyed.... Disabled horses removed from the streets in ambu lances..... Complaints investigated.. Kindred organizations, in correspondence with the parent society, in North and South America, are numbered in the hundreds. They exist under State laws and local ordinances in thirty-two States and five Territories; in British America in ten leading cities; and also in the Argentine Republic, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. The early history of this body is the better part of the mature life of Henry Bergh, to whom it became the chief interest of his declining years. A picturesque if saturnine character in the local coloring of the city, fond of publicity, a resolute and often an unreasonable fighter-like all set all of the dead-letter statutes of the ages. Its operations have multiplied tenfold, and it not only concerns itself with isolated and sensational cases as of yore, but it has become a systematized and central bureau with a widely extended field, with increased legal power, and a staff of officers employed by day and by night to carry out the aims of its existence. Its active officials number such gentlemen as Elbridge T. Gerry, Rev. Morgan Dix, John Claflin, Parke Godwin, Joseph H. Choate, Horace Russell, Frederic R. Coudert, William Waldorf Astor, F. W. Vanderbilt, Charles Lanier, Anson Phelps Stokes and W. C. Schermerhorn. Hence, in the growing popular and in the specific care and solicitude for the well-being of the horse world there is much to congratulate the American people. While there is a great deal to reform in public and private sales--in swindling schemes under the red flag, whereby there are sheriff's sales of the poor man's stock that are a disgrace to the municipal administration - the wealthier of our citizens set a high example to those who by their professional occupations are constantly engaged in this kind of barter. Who can forget the late August Belmont, seated on the curbstone in front of his mansion at Eighteenth street and Fifth Avenue, inspecting his own purchases before passing over his check?and in this expert judgment he exhibited a dis crimination that was seldom at fault. This was conspicuous in the final disposition of St. Blaiseat Tattersall's for a liberal fortune as one of the assets of his vast estate. Compare with this the sale of an equally worthy member of the equine fold, if standards of immutable equality are to obtain among the species, of a laborworn animal, not yet disabled for long work in the shafts, which I recently saw knocked down to a casual bidder for $6.50, the horse being all that remained of the property of an impoverished greengrocer. The kaleidoscopic display of horses in the metropolis, from the moment long cavalcades of green ones from the Far West are stampeded at their first view of the elevated railway, to the grand fashionable climax of the National Horse Show at the Madison Square Garden, reveals to us a world in which we find a new life on which to fasten our attention and our pleasures, fascinating in all phases, bringing together thebeauty, wealth and fashion of the Union, affording us inspiring instruction and kindly sympathy, while thrilling displays of equestrian daring may well people our visions with the wild glories of the ancient Coliseum at Rome. In conclusion, I may say that the subject of horses presented in the manner here employed is capable of almost indefinite narrative and specu-lation. BY J. CARTER BEARD. "There's history in every flower. If you have wit to gather it.”—Beattie. AMELIA DE NORDBURG was a spoiled beauty. The only child of a wealthy widow, an heiress in her own right, and the affianced bride of the handsomest gentleman, the most courtly noble and the bravest soldier in Saxony (for the Count of Nabsthein, her intended husband, united in himself these characteristics, besides being a very intelligent man and a very honest one), it might be truthfully said of her, in the words of the homely Saxon proverb she must often have heard: "Gieb den Leuten die Erde zum Spielen, or one still more common: "Gieb dem Teufel den Finger, Und er wird zuletzt die Hand verlangen." And they reach for the moon.") Sated with possession of all that is desirable, Amelia found a certain pleasure in tempting the undesirable: as truante weans That, seeking sport, do from safe bounders breake, To challenge peril, for the peril's sake." In vain her mother's pleadings, or her lover's remonstrances; she was too confident of her power, to dream that her mother would seriously attempt to use authority, or her lover break into open rebellion. She believed his jealousy would make him prize her more and rivet chains she intended he should wear for life. For her own part, the only chains she intended for her self were those imposed upon her by her own purpose in pursuit of her own pleasure. These chains seem at first to be made of the softest and most fragrant of flowers, but they suffer in time a strange and most unpleasant transmutation into the harshest iron. Amelia found this rule had no exceptions. At last the end came. The salon of Mme. de Nordburg was brilliant with lights falling softened from the colored globes of the chandeliers, to start a thousand flashing fires below that blazed from gems and sparkled no less brilliantly in eyes aglow with love and pleasure. It was a feast of flowers. Among delicate viands and ices, a profusion of blossoms of every sort seemed to transform the tables into parterres, and the foliage of the larger plants, about in groups on every side, gave the salon itself the appearance of a large conservatory. The interest of the occasion centred in a tournament of wit and sentiment before the doors of the dancing hall were thrown open. This was the selection of flowers by the ladies, and the writing of impromptu verses upon the chosen flowers by the gentlemen. Amelia had an humble companion, brought up with her from infancy, a cousin "possessing few personal charms and still less fortune." The amiable and humble Charlotte was too insignificant to engage attention. Neither her presence nor her absence occasioned comment in the circles where her gay cousin reigned the brilliant centre of attraction. Not so, however, among those whose cheerless lives, darkened by ignorance and embittered by privation, serve as a foil to set off the splendor of fashionable life in European capitals. Among these she shone a ministering angel, and with them most of her time was spent. Returning from an errand of charity, she entered the salon at the moment Amelia had coquettishly selected a rose, emblematic of her own beauty, because a certain Colonel Compleux, "more celebrated for his conquests in the drawing room than on the field of battle," with whom Amelia happened at that moment to be carrying on a desperate flirtation, signified his preference for that flower. The greater part of the company had declared their choice, when the gentle Charlotte, in compliance with a request from her aunt, culled for herself and placed in her bosom a spray of mignonette which had, by some accident, found a place among the more aristocratic flowers. This delicate recognition of her lowly position would probably have passed unnoticed but from the fact that, seeing the uneasiness which the count could not conceal at the conduct of his affianced bride, and in order to recall the interest and attention of Amelia, whose real happiness he earnestly desired, to their proper object, she requested of him a verse upon the rose, her foster sister's choice. Her object was divined by the count. He wrote upon his ivory tablets the verse asked for, and another. One, for the rose, he gave to Amelia, who had not quitted the side of his rival: "Elle ne vit qu'un jour, et ne plait qu'un moment" ("It lives but a day, and pleases but a moment"); and at the same time presented to Charlotte the beautiful sentiment ever since associated with the mignonette: "Ses qualités surpassent ses charmes." Fired with resentment and flushed with wounded pride, Amelia gave herself entirely to the attentions of the colonel, with whom she shortly after eloped. It was then, in the power of a worthless profligate who brought her to ruin, she found her bands of flowers changed to iron chains. "The count," our informant tells us, "transferred his affections from beauty to amiability, and rejoicing in the exchange, and to commemorate the event which had brought about his happiness and delivered him from a coquette, he added a branch of sweet reseda to the ancient arms of his family, with the motto: "Ses qualités surpassent ses charmes." It is probably this little romantic history, which is well known in Saxony, and in which love instead of war is introduced to the pursuivant at arms, that has caused the name of the country to be associated with mignonette-one of the most lowly and sweetest of flowering plants. To pass to the heraldry of the other flower mentioned-Amelia's choice-we are reminded : "Our fateful rose, wherever seen, Blazoned on England's shield, is queen. The rose of York is white-for, mark, Brave armies of the dead bequeath Their pallor to the rose of York. For, white or red, the rose is queen." Thirty years the roses fought. Eighty princes of the blood and a proportionately large number of noblemen, not to speak of some hundred thousand or so of common people, were slain. When Henry VII. of Lancaster married Elizabeth of York, and so grafted the white upon the red-rose stock, though he did it reluctantly and ungracefully enough, he ended forever the Wars of the Roses. At this time, we are told, there grew in a monastic garden in Wiltshire a rosebush that had, to the great admiration of all beholders, during the perilous times of the wars, borne white and red roses upon the same stem. At the marriage of the King this same bush bore roses, the petals of which were streaked with red and white. Multitudes came from all parts of England to be hold the marvel, and counted it, with God's blessing, a joyful promise of peace. Surely the good monks must have understood floriculture. It is certainly a curious coincidence that the battle of the red and white lilies should have preceded that of the red and white roses; for, as the soldiers of the York and Lancaster parties went to battle, each with a rose of the color appropriate to his faction, so those of the Guelphs and Ghibellines bore their proper badges, the first a red and the second a white lily, in their contests during the period in Italian history between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Introduced, in all probability, by the Crusaders, who found it growing in the valleys of Syria, the lily, because of its having been the subject of one of the Saviour's most striking illustrations, became in a manner sacred, and a favorite badge and armorial bearing. Chaucer speaks of a knight who wore one in place of a plume upon the crest of his helmet. Florence adopted the flower as her national emblem. It is found upon the arms of the city of Winchester and upon the college. In France we find the Order of the Blessed Lady of the Lily, and the dauphin was named "The Lily of France." The so-called lily emblazoned on the royal banner of France appears to have been the iris or fleur-de-lis, although considerable confusion seems to have existed in the minds of both ancient and modern writers on the subject. The name "fleur-de-lis" being a corrupt form of "fleur-de-luce," the latter may readily be traced to fleur-de-louis. Louis is the modernized form of Lovis or Clovis. Clovis, we are told, had no better taste than to exhibit three black toads upon his escutcheon, but an angel pitying his lack of appreciation of the fitness of things, appeared, after the manner of those early days, to an aged hermit of Joy-en-Valle, in a flood of miraculous light, with a shield especially designed and prepared for the occasion. Its color was azure, in token of its heavenly origin, and upon. it were emblazoned three golden fleur-de-lis (trois fleurs de lis d'or). The hermit was instructed to give this shield to Queen Clothilde. The Queen in turn presented it to her husband, who thereupon. became everywhere victorious. As the red and white lilies of Italy and the roses of England, so also the fleur-de-lis has been the badge of bloodshed. Proscribed during the French Revolution, hundreds of persons found wearing it were decapitated. The bee substituted by Napoleon has taken flight, and his violets have withered away. No one can tell what flower France will next adopt for her national emblem. But blind devotion to a mere badge of party or race sometimes works harm in other directions |