200 THE MERRY GEE-GEE 



daunted, I've been playing the great 

 game off and on ever since. 



After I left school, our grocer was 

 my bookmaker. Sporting grocers ' are 

 about as rare as non-sporting butchers, 

 and as for a non-sporting barber, he is 

 unworthy his high calling. • Do not 

 mighty turf secrets emanate from our 

 friend the sporting barber ? Does he not 

 shave a young fellow that courts the cook 

 at the same house where the housemaid 

 lives that Dawsons head travelling-lad 

 is going to marry ? or doesn't Bill Cash, 

 the bookmaker, have his hair cut at our 

 friend the tonsorial artist's ? Anyhow, 

 our grocer was my bookmaker till I got 

 older and fixed, and knew more, and 

 wanted to dash more down and pick 

 more up ; so I played the game more 

 gallantly, and as time went on got to 

 bet in ponies, and fifties, and hundreds 



