268 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



races if they were called upon to pay. If you 

 offered them a gate show instead of what they 

 are accustomed to, you would be without their 

 company, which, after all, is not wholly unprofit- 

 able, because they make the value of the sites for 

 booths and bars through their custom. You would 

 also, while getting rid of their patronage, very 

 likely miss their support and sympathy, their 

 votes and influence, when your pet pastime was 

 assailed by the anti-amusement gang. As it is, 

 you lose little that might be collected, strengthen 

 the power of sport in the land, and give the 

 populace opportunity for making holiday — surely 

 a worthy action. I would like some of the 

 reforming folk to pay a visit to the old Devon- 

 shire place, whose townsmen will forgive me for 

 chancing on the word *' reform." If these folk — 

 the anti lot — did not see much to please them, 

 they must be a poor-hearted crowd. Perhaps 

 all would not accord with their views. That is 

 not the question. The main thing is that these 

 sports, paid for by other people, do vastly please 

 the multitude and lead to no harm fairly charge- 

 able to their account. They have flourished on 

 sportsmanlike lines for years, and I hope will for 

 many more to come. 



The stand, I mean not any of the free ones I 

 mentioned earlier, but the wooden one perched on 

 a convenient hillock-side, affords accommodation 

 for I won't say how many hundreds. You do 

 not as a rule associate the flower of a county — of 

 several counties — with presence in a race-stand at 

 four shillings per head. Yet in this cheap affair 

 was an assemblage which few of our swagger 

 courses can beat. Compared to Sandown it was 

 to my thinking, as Canterbury cricket ground in 



