better than either, better because more efficient.

When this was clear to me I sent for my trainer. He was one of those spare,
wiry Englishmen, with skin like tanned and painted hide--brown except
where the bones seem about to push their sharp angles through, and there
a frosty, winter-apple red. He dressed like a Deadwood gambler, he talked
like a stable boy; but for all that, you couldn't fail to see he was a
gentleman born and bred. Yes, he was a gentleman, though he mixed profanity
into his ordinary flow of conversation more liberally than did I when in a
rage.

I stood up before him, threw my coat back, thrust my thumbs into my
trousers pockets and slowly turned about like a ready-made tailor's dummy.
"Monson," said I, "what do you think of me?"

He looked me over as if I were a horse he was about to buy. "Sound, I'd
say," was his verdict. "Good wind--uncommon good wind. A goer, and a
stayer. Not a lump. Not a hair out of place." He laughed. "Action a bit
high perhaps--for the track. But a grand reach."

"I know all that," said I. "You miss my point. Suppose you wanted to enter
me for--say, the Society Sweepstakes--what then?"

"Um--um," he muttered reflectively. "That's different."

"Don't I look--sort of--new--as if the varnish was still sticky and might
come off on the ladies' dresses and on the fine furniture?"

"Oh--that!" said he dubiously. "But all those kinds of things are matters
of taste."