plative manner; he does not drink much; he
smokes little, and he appears to have nothing in particular to worry
him. If he knows you well, he will scarcely mind your presence; men (and
boys) greet him, and little, gentle colloquies take place from time to
time; the smartest man could detect nothing, and yet the noiseless,
placid gentleman of the smoking-room registers thirty or forty bets in a
day. That is one type which I have watched for hours, days, months.
There are dozens of other types, but I need not attempt to sketch them;
it is sufficient to say that the poison has taken hard hold on us, and
that I see every symptom of a national decadence.

Some one may say, "But you excused the Turf and the betting men."
Exactly. I said that racing is a delightful pastime to those who go to
watch good horses gallop; the miserable thing to me is seeing the
wretches who do not care for racing at all, but only care for gambling
on names and numbers. Let Lord Hartington, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr.
Chaplin, Mr. Corlett, Mr. Rothschild, Lord Rosebery, and the rest, go
and see the lovely horses shooting over the turf; by all means let them
watch their own colts and fillies come flying home. But the poor
creatures who muddle away brains, energy, and money on what _they_ are
pleased to term sport, do not know a horse from a mule; they gamble, as
I have said, on names; the splendid racers give them no enjoyment such
as the true sportsman derives, for they would not know Ormonde from a
Clydesdale. To these forlorn beings only the ignoble side of racing is
known; it is sacrilege to call them sportsmen; they are rotting their
very souls and destroying the remnants of their manhood over a game
which they play blindfold. It is pitiful--most pitiful. No good-natured
man will begrudge occasional holiday-makers their chance of seeing a
good race. Rural and industrial Yorkshire are represented by thousands
at Doncaster, on the St. Ledger day, and the tourists get no particular
harm; they are horsey to the backbone, and they come to see the running.
They criticize the animals and gain topics for months of conversation,
and, if they bet an odd half-crown and never go beyond it, perhaps no
one is much the worse. When the Duke of Portland allowed his tenantry to
see St. Simon gallop five years ago at Newcastle, the pitmen and
artisans thronged to look at the horse. There was no betting whatever,
because no conceivable odds could have measured the