THE LIFE OF A SPORI S.MxVN 



country races; and, havini;- heard uie offer a few bets yesterday, 

 have been following me about the course to-day, with the liope 

 of winning my money. But I shall be ver}' cautious in having 

 anything to say to them, for two reasons. In the first place, 

 my knowledge of the horses must be very inferior to that of 

 themselves, who are intimate with all the trainers and jockeys 

 in the countj^ ; and in the next, many of them dispute a bet 

 if they lose it. For example, the man Emma saw me disputing 

 with served me thus : — having won ten pounds from him 

 yesterday, I went up to him to-day, and said, very civilly, " I will 

 thank you for ten pounds " ; on which he replied, " I beg pardon, 

 sir, / kave ten pounds to receive from you." ' 



' And did you pay the fellow ? ' said Lady Charlotte. 



' I did not,' replied Frank, ' but I lost the ten pounds I 

 won from him. Then that old Irishman is, I understand, 

 famous for making wrangles, and disputing bets which he 

 loses. But the gi'eatest adept of them all, is the well-dressed 

 rascal you first saw me speaking to. He has a method of 

 half-shutting one eye, so as to give the appearance of being 

 blind of it. This device serves him in two ways. When he 

 makes a bet with a stranger, he appears blind of an eye, 

 previous to the event being decided ; if the bet is lost, he 

 shows two good eyes, and the stranger being in pursuit of a 

 one-eyed man to pay him his money, overlooks him in the 

 crowd, and, of course, never gets paid. Then, again, I heard 

 of his doing a very neat thing, the other day, by the help of 

 this accommodating eye. He lost twenty pounds to a stranger, 

 on a race, having his eye closed when he made the bet. On 

 the result being against him, he thus addressed his antagonist, 

 with his eye wide open : " I believe, sir, I owe you twenty 

 pounds." " You mistake, sir," replied the other, " I had only 

 one bet on the race, avd that was witJc a one-eyed (jentleman." ' 



' Well, really, Francis,' observed Lady Charlotte, ' I think 

 you must be a very great simpleton to have anything to do 

 with such scoundrels ; in fact, it is only with simpletons that 

 they dare to play such tricks. As you cannot be a match for 

 them, I hope you will, from this time forth, have nothing more 

 to do with them.' 



Our hero made no repl}', and so the matter dropped. 



The other incident which occurred is of a more harmless 

 nature. In the days to which I am now alluding, it was the 



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