BOOWUAKIXG. 173 



of action that he feels tired and much inclhicd to eat 

 a good dinner and go early to bed. As a rule, the best 

 bookmakers are rather abstemious in regard to drink- 

 ing, and as a class they are sober men, many of them 

 not tasting wines or spirits for months at a stretch. 



A goodly number of the present bookmakers have 

 'risen' from nothing, and it is to their credit that many 

 of them are known to make a ofood use of their savin-^s, 



o O 



Their rise to wealth in most cases has been slow but 

 sure, and not without vicissitudes of varying fortune. 



' I one day put my whole savings on a single 

 chance,' said one of them to the writer, ' and had it 

 not come off in my favour, I would probably have 

 needed to go back to my O'd trade of costerraonger- 

 iiig, and the missus, instead of riding about in her 

 brougham, might have been shouting " Sprats !" over 

 Lambeth way.' 



Said another bookmaker : * I was potman in a 

 West-End beerhouse twenty-five years ago near the 

 Corner, and what struck me was that lots of gentle- 

 men's coachmen were always asking me for the loan 

 of a sovereign or a tiver to pay their bets with, giving 

 me a small acknowledgment for the favour when they 

 got their wages. I thought to myself, That's very odd : 

 these men seem to be always a-dropping of their 

 money ; who can be a-lifting it ? It's them bookmakers, 

 thinks I, and that book making is surely not a bad 

 game if people be alwa3-s a-backing of the wrong horse. 

 So then and there I starts a little book, just for silver 

 money, and I got on so ^vell at the business that I 

 gave up handling the pots, and now I go to the meet- 

 ings with the best of 'em, and can lay the odds to a ten 



