Trainers, Touts, and Tipsters 



" I know what the horses are doing here, but I 

 do not know what they are doing on the blessed 

 course ; and, in my opinion, it is this " — he held up 

 a scrubby pencil — " which often stops them when 

 I dare to have half a dollar on each way." That 

 is, alas ! what people are apt to say when they 

 have lost their money in Tattersall's ring. If, 

 they murmur, the reins had only broken ! Yet, 

 assuredly, owners, trainers, and jockeys, to say 

 nothing about the horse, are thankful to win races 

 at every favourable opportunity. " Pencilitis," 

 forsooth ! Perish the ignoble thought ! We are 

 eager to score when we can, for, apart from the 

 sordid considerations, such success is our chief, if 

 not our only, raison d'etre. Take it from us, and 

 we are like fishes out of water through no fault 

 of their own ; we may be even a trifle white about 

 the gills, gadshooks ; but I am not betting on 

 that change of tint as though it were an abso- 

 lutely piscatorial "pinch." Anglers are not 

 assumed to speak the truth when their subject 

 is congenial. 



Funny stories by the dozen are told about the 

 least of the terrible " T's " — the poor tipsters. 

 One of them, who did not understand his 

 business, " gave " a dead horse to win a valuable 

 handicap — he thought the animal was in training, 



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