through
alcoholic excesses. He was dressed in a shiny overcoat, and his bony
shanks threatened to pierce his trousers. When he pushed back his rakish
greasy hat, he showed a remarkably fine forehead--well filled, strong,
square--but he had the weakest and most sensual mouth I ever saw. There
was scarcely a sign of a lower jaw, and the chin retreated sharply from
the lip to the emaciated neck.

My man spoke with a deep voice that contrasted oddly with his air of
debility, and I noticed that he not only had a good accent, but his
words were uttered with a deliberate attempt at formal and polished
elocution. We talked of horse-racing, and he mouthed out one speech
after another with a balanced kind of see-saw, which again and again ran
into blank verse. I said, "You have something good for Lincoln, I hear.
Any chance of being on?" He replied, "I heed no fairy tales or boasting
yarns. When a man says he has a certainty, I tell him to his face that
he's a liar. The ways of chance are far beyond our ken, and I can but
say that I try. Information I have. From Newmarket I receive daily
messages, and I have as much chance of being right as other men have;
but you know what the Bard says. Ah! what a student of human nature
that man was! What an intellect! In apprehension how like a god! You
know what he says of prophecy and chance? I only fire a bolt at a
venture, and if my venture don't come off, then I say, 'Pay up and look
pleasant.'"

The majestic roll of his speech was very funny, and he poured forth his
resonant periods as though I had been standing at a distance of twenty
yards. As the gin stirred his sluggish blood he became more and more
declamatory, and when at last he fairly yelled, "I am a gambler. I could
not brook life if I had no excitement. It is my very blood. Yet, think
not my words are false as dicers' oaths," and waved his right hand with
a lordly gesture, I thought, "An old actor, for certain." So long as his
senses remained he talked shrewdly about betting, and his remarks were
free from the mingled superstition and rascality which make ordinary
racing talk so odious; but when he began to drink rapidly he soon became
violent, and finished by carrying on like a madman. He shouted passages
from "Hamlet" and "Coriolanus" with ear-splitting fervour, and at last
he drew a universal protest from the rest of our crew, who are
certainly not sensitive. Then his yell grew maudlin. "Why did God make
me thus? Why do I