Ahout Betting and GamhUiig. 85 



is, the world was not educated, and little societies were 

 isolated, and people were old-fashioned, and there was a 

 good deal of boarding-school Miss-ism amongst young ladies, 

 and cards were requisite to prevent people sitting round 

 the room and staring at each other, with little or nothing 

 to say. All this state of things died out with railways and 

 travelling ; and music has made rapid strides, not only with 

 ladies, but men have now the sense to find out that playing 

 the piano is no longer considered effeminate, and there are 

 few country houses now where you do not find young men 

 who accompany themselves or others well on the piano, and 

 who can sing part-music at sight, or even a buffo or patter 

 song very fairly, after the model of Corney Grain or the 

 late Charles Matthews. Lawn tennis out of doors — a 

 charming pastime when that terrible bore, a soi disant 

 champion player, is conspicious by his absence,— dancing, 

 and music have banished cards from ordinary society ; and 

 in what would be called unfashionable life, young clerks 

 and shopmen and id genus oinne most sensibly and credit- 

 ably have gone in for volunteering, cricket, rowing, 

 bicycling, football, and all other pastimes on their Saturday 

 half- holidays, and have places of meeting in the winter 

 where music, dramatic recitals, reading — all taken " with 

 tobacco " in these smoking days, — and the general tone of 

 educated people has been much improved. The broad- 

 brimmed hat and " covert coat " schools, who represent the 

 " gent " of Albert Smith's days, who frequent restaurant 

 bars and music-halls and low billiard rooms, and have no 

 two decent ideas, may be dismissed as useless and mis- 

 chievous excrescences of a city which contains four millions 

 of people ; but there is a class of *' weak-kneed " brothers 

 of all ranks who are going to ruin through betting and 

 gambling under our very noses every hour. I say again 

 that betting and gambling are the curse of the day. It 



