Chance and Luck

Of course I have given here but a mild account of the way in which men who bet on horses make money. They have been known to go a great deal farther. Some will willingly take the odds against a horse after they knew certainly that the horse would not run. Others, a shade more advanced, have been known to bribe a jockey to 'hold' or 'rope' a horse, or a stableman to poison or even stupefy him. Others, ay, even 'noble' owners, have been known to work the market in ways fully as flagitious.

Let me, in conclusion, quote two short passages, one from a letter by Charles Dickens, the other from a speech by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. The first seems to relate to the successful bookmaker: -- 'I look at the back of his bad head repeated in long lines on the racecourse, and in the betting-stand, and outside the betting-rooms, and I vow to God I can see nothing in it but cruelty, covetousness, calculation, insensibility, and low wickedness. . . . If a boy with any good in him, but with a dawning propensity to sporting and betting, were but brought here soon enough, it would cure him.' The other passage applies to the bookmaker and his victim alike: -- 'The pernicious and fatal habit' of betting 'is so demoralizing and degrading, that, like some foul leprosy, it will eat away the conscience until a man comes to think that it is his duty to himself to "do his neighbor as his neighbor would do" him.'