s become universal. We talk of
the Italians as a gambling nation, but they are not to be compared with
the English for recklessness and purblind persistence. I know almost
every town in England, and I say without fear that the main topic of
conversation in every place of entertainment where the traveller stays
is betting. A tourist must of course make for hotel after hotel where
the natives of each place congregate; and, if he keeps his ears open, he
will find the gambling venom has tainted the life-blood of the people in
every town from Berwick to Hastings. It may be asked, "How do these
silly creatures who bet manage to obtain any idea of a horse?" They have
not the faintest notion of what any given horse is like, but they
usually follow the advice of some sharper who pretends to know what is
going to win. There are some hundreds of persons who carry on a kind of
secret trade in information, and these persons profess their ability to
enable any one to win a fortune. The dupes write for advice, enclosing a
fee, and they receive the name of a horse; then they risk their money,
and so the shocking game goes on.

I receive only too many letters from wives, mothers, and sisters whose
loved ones are being drawn into the vortex of destruction. Let me give
some rough colloquial advice to the gamblers--"You bet on horses
according to the advice of men who watch them. Observe how foolish you
are! The horse A is trained in Yorkshire; the horse B at Newmarket. The
man who watches A thinks that the animal can gallop very fast, and you
risk your money according to his report. But what means has he of
knowing the speed of B? If two horses gallop towards the winning-post
locked together, it often happens that one wins by about six inches.
There is no real difference in their speed, but the winner happens to
have a neck slightly longer than the other. Observe that one
race-horse--Buccaneer--has been known to cover a mile at the rate of
fifty-four feet per second; it is therefore pretty certain that at his
very highest speed he could move at sixty feet per second. Very good; it
happens then that a horse which wins a race by one foot is about
one-sixtieth of a second faster, than the beaten animal. What a dolt you
must be to imagine that any man in the world could possibly tell you
which of those two brutes was likely to be the winner! It is the merest
guess-work; you have all the chances against you and you might as well
bet on the tos