TYPES ON A RACECOURSE 



always hearing of the Goudie case . Certainly he got the 

 fiair for racing; he was " easy " for those who found 

 him ; but all the evidence showed that he had culti- 

 vated the taste for racing himself before he ever knew 

 any of those who were incriminated. The chances are 

 that he would have followed on one bit of stealing after 

 another, and the same falsification of the books of the 

 bank would have occurred to a big amount if he had 

 never met those who were eventually charged for the 

 *' business." Goudie didn't squeal. He hid himself, 

 but was found ; had his sentence and died in prison. 

 Dick Burge, who was a sufferer, has thoroughly put 

 himself right with the public. Old Marks, whom many 

 will remember as sitting on a chair in the courtyard 

 of the Cecil every morning and evening, is supposed to 

 have slid overboard from a Channel steamer. The story 

 was not believed at the time, but apparently that was 

 his fate ; in any case he was a very old man, and if 

 he slipped away may have died within a few years. 

 Another who was well known about Paris fifteen years 

 ago as the " Colonel," and a champion draughts player, 

 went to America, but the bank, which had lost over 

 sixty thousand pounds, did not follow up the business, 

 and, well, the whole thing has become an incident of 

 the past. It is no part of these memories to exculpate 

 anyone, but the sporting world, with few exceptions, 

 was very sorry for Burge, and have been delighted that 

 he could come back to the world an unbroken man, 

 one capable of putting himself on his feet and looking 

 at straight men with a straight eye. 



I wrote a serial once called " The Getting Back 

 Stakes," a hundred-thousand- word novel, the incidents 

 of which were nearly in every way facts. One or 

 two men came to me and said they " knew cases very 

 similar, how a man of good breeding had attempted 



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