122 TEMPTATION. 



he pleases to the trainer, who actually works the 

 horses ; and so long as things are well done, he 

 should not interfere ; but it does a trainer no harm 

 to be aware the eye of some one is kept open over the 

 horses who can detect anything that is not well done, 

 and also knows (supposing a stake is open in which a 

 horse can be entered with a fair prospect of winning) 

 whether the horse is fit to go for it; and further 

 knows, if told that he is not, whether he ought or 

 could be expected to have been. This no man who 

 only sees his horses occasionally could know, nor can 

 he, or at least ought he, to take upon himself to 

 decide in such a case. 



I consider it a duty that every man owes to others 

 as well as to himself not to throw such temptation in 

 the way, as it may be almost impossible for a man of 

 ordinary mind to resist. Let then any man keeping 

 race-horses in a public training stable, and who leaves 

 them to the care of a public trainer, consider the 

 abyss constantly under him. A trainer has possibly 

 two horses in his stable, both engaged in the same 

 race : he can in such a case very accurately judge 

 which is the best of the two for that particular race. 

 It is by no means unlikely that these two horses may 

 be nearly on a par, and yet, from various causes, it 

 may happen that he can get 30 to 1 against the one, 

 and not 6 to 1 against the other. He takes the first 

 in hundreds, perhaps two or three times over : sup- 

 posing he thinks the horse he backs at such long odds 

 the worst or best of the two, or thinks them equally 

 good, in either case it is expecting a great deal if we 

 suppose he will not make three times thirty hundred 

 tolerably safe. No one but himself knows how near 

 the qualities of these horses may be to each other: 



