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kept for the poor people to bet in. These dens of iniquity are all well 

 known to the police, and every one of them should be swept from out 

 of our cities the same as any other abominable matter. 



Iniquitous as gambling on horses undoubtedly is, compared with 

 transactions on the Stock Exchange those on the Turf stand far away 

 higher in the standard righteousness. No bogus race meetings are 

 floated at Tattersall's. No owner enters to be started a horse which 

 he has no right to, not to speak of one which never was foaled and 

 never will be. To peruse the list of a bookmaker we see in it none 

 but horses which are in existence, and which have some sort of 

 chance to win, while the prices set opposite them are bond fide. 

 Do we ever find emanating from the Stock Exchange such affairs as 

 " bogus companies " ? Do we ever know of brokers buying and selling 

 shares which are not, and never were, in their possession — aye, perhaps, 

 never in existence ? 



Comparisons, however, are odious, and two blacks do not make one 

 white ; I shall therefore leave to others to deal with gambling on the 

 Stock Exchange. I allude to it only to show that, at all events, we get 

 a fairer run for our money by backing horses than by backing bulls 

 and bears. 



I wind up this chapter by relating a gruesome story told some years 

 ago, the truth of which I have no reason to doubt. A young man 

 employed in a Dublin place of business had, through betting, got into 

 extreme difficulties, but determined upon a venture in the hope of 

 extricating himself. He made a book on the Curraghmore Hunt 

 Plate of 1874, for which he backed Scot's Grey for all he could get on, 

 and laid against everything else, particularly a mare named Departure. 

 He saw the race run at Williamstown, and thought, as everybody else 

 did, that Departure had won ; but the judge awarded it to Scot's Grey 

 by a short head. The man I allude to was never heard of afterwards. 

 The conjecture was that directly the race was over, and before the 

 numbers were hoisted, he, thinking he had lost everything, bolted, 

 and as he never turned up to claim his bets, all of vjhicli he had ivon^ 

 it was supposed that he had drowned himself in the river Suir ! ! 



