CHAPTER XIV. 



ON EACING. 



Pew are the folk who do not in their hearts 

 love horse-racing. Many, from principle, 

 from prudence, or from circumstance, ahstain 

 from sharing in the sport, hut nearly all 

 have an open or secret sympathy with it. 

 It is indeed a fine sport, taken on its intrinsic 

 merits, and apart from the fraud and 

 chicanery with which the greed of man has 

 ever surrounded it, hut which common-sense 

 obliges us to regard as its accidental, rather 

 than necessary, concomitant. The spectacle 

 of the most beautiful animal on this earth, 

 which I take to be the thoroughbred horse, 

 galloping with his free elastic stride, and 

 striving with generous emulation (as he will 

 when fairly handled) to surpass his fellows, 



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