MODERN BETTING ILLUSTRATED, ETC. 201 



When the tide of " luck " favours those men 

 who court the smiles of Fortune in racinof circles, 

 she seems to lavish her treasures on them with 

 an unsparing hand. There are men now living at 

 Newmarket worth thousands of pounds that ten 

 or twelve years since would have found it diffi- 

 cult to scrape together ten shillings. These are 

 among the men who have " risen," and so 

 dazzled the eyes of some of the gentlemen of the 

 sporting press. When they own a horse or two, 

 as several now do, and one of their animals 

 proves successful in winning a race, they are 

 at once elevated another step, and spoken of 

 by some writers as " the astute Mr. So-and-So," 

 or as Mr. This-and-That, " the clever and in- 

 telligent owner " of Cheek and other well-known 

 horses. 



During recent years much has been written 

 and said against the system of betting for ready 

 money. Of all the "fads" (the reader is asked 

 to excuse this vulgarism) connected with gam- 

 bling on the turf that have become prominent 

 during recent years the denunciation of ready 

 money betting is certainly the most extraordinary 

 — the most abused of them all. Ready money 

 betting has been declared illegal. But why 

 should betting in ready money be wrong if 

 betting on credit be right } If any kind of 

 betting be proper it most assuredly should be 

 betting for ready money, than which there ought 

 to be no other kind of betting. The rules of 

 logic were never surely so much set at naught 

 as when it was decreed that betting by means 

 of the payment of ready money — that is to say the 

 depositing of the stakes — should be stigmatised 



