About Betting and Gamhling. 87 



Horse-racing has no more to do with the betting mania 

 than the man in the moon, jyer se ; it is the free press which 

 has done it, and the telegraphs. Every penny, and every 

 halfpenny paper now has the latest odds in respect of all 

 horses, and even foreign racing — in fact, a paper which did 

 not publish the betting lists would have no sale, — and the 

 lists are read by a lot of boobies who don't know a racehorse 

 from a cow, which boobies think it the thing to bet ; and 

 the aggregate sum subscribed by boobies who bet, and who 

 " put the pot on," is sometimes so considerable as to be 

 worth more than the stakes themselves, and so Mr. Mephis- 

 topheles, the owner or the man who " manages the stable," 

 goes to some public place of resort and puts the pot on him- 

 self in one big sensation bet, which is taken by a con- 

 federate, who is laying on the quiet every shilling he can 

 get against the horse. Nothing is easier than to get up a 

 rumour that the horse pulled up lame, or some story of 

 that kind, and when Mr. Mephistopheles runs his pen 

 through the horse's name, all the knowing ones (?) declare 

 they must have won if the horse had run. And they go on 

 again and again, till the venerable grey-healed butler 

 cannot make out the plate list correctly ; and some wretched 

 young clerk — " respectably connected and gentlemanly- 

 looking young man," as the police reports say — has put five 

 or six hundred pounds on the wrong side of the ledger ; or 

 young de Plunger has left the cavalry and joined an 

 infantry regiment in India, and so on, and so on, ad 

 infinitum. 



The real connection with horse -racing and betting proper 

 is this : Betting is a chance for an owner who has a good 

 horse to recoup himself for very heavy expenses. He buys 

 a yearling or two, perhaps, or breeds colts ; in fact, he goes 

 in for racing as a business. He enters his horses for various 

 races, and if he has any sense he keeps his thoughts to 



