SALE OF DIAMOND JUBILEE 171 



your fancy. If it should win, your man will go and 

 collect your money for you. I never but once made 

 a bet there, but, being incited to do so, looked at the 

 card and saw something by Flotsam had top weight. 

 I knew absolutely nothing about the animal, but sent 

 a man to buy me two tickets. It won all the way in 

 a canter, at some sort of reasonable odds I forget what. 



This class of racing does not appeal to me at all. 

 The people congregate and bet just as they would on 

 "Little Horses" or any other game of chance. The 

 racing goes on every Sunday from year end to year 

 end, and the horses are trained close by. The wonder 

 is that they retain any vitality and courage in such 

 arduous monotony, which constitutes the real curse of 

 the totalisator from a horse-breeding point of view. 

 Palermo racing is as if there were a race-meeting in 

 Hyde Park every Sunday afternoon, backed by the 

 totalisator. This would pay the rates of London, 

 but it would ruin the horses. It would, however, be 

 infinitely preferable to the base uses to which the 

 Park is put now by half-witted religionists and idiotic 

 revolutionaries. 



Senor Correas will remember consulting me at the 

 Rutland Arms, Newmarket, before he bought Diamond 

 Jubilee for 30,000 guineas. He asked me to tell him 

 my opinion as a friend. I had nothing to do with the 

 deal, and no great belief in Diamond Jubilee, but I 

 advised him to close, feeling sure that he would get 

 his money back over the first stock (which he did), and 

 well knowing the prestige which the horse must carry 

 with him as a winner of the triple crown, brother to 

 Persimmon and the property of the King. All has 

 gone happily since then with Diamond Jubilee, who 



