e irreverently to
touch his old war-horse, Copenhagen, on whom he had ridden fifteen
hours without dismounting at Waterloo; and when old Copenhagen died,
his master ordered a military salute fired over his grave. John
Howard showed that he did not exhaust all his sympathies in pitying
the human race, for when sick he writes home: "Has my old chaise-horse
become sick or spoiled?"

But we do not think that the speed of the horse should be cultured at
the expense of human degradation. Horse-races, in olden times, were
under the ban of Christian people, and in our day the same institution
has come up under fictitious names, and it is called a "Summer
Meeting," almost suggestive of positive religious exercises. And it is
called an "Agricultural Fair," suggestive of everything that is
improving in the art of farming. But under these deceptive titles are
the same cheating and the same betting, the same drunkenness and the
same vagabondage and the same abominations that were to be found under
the old horse-racing system.

I never knew a man yet who could give himself to the pleasures of the
turf for a long reach of time, and not be battered in morals. They
hook up their spanking team, and put on their sporting-cap, and light
their cigar, and take the reins, and dash down the road to perdition.
The great day at Saratoga, and Long Branch, and Cape May, and nearly
all the other watering-places, is the day of the races. The hotels are
thronged, nearly every kind of equipage is taken up at an almost
fabulous price, and there are many respectable people mingling with
jockeys, and gamblers, and libertines, and foul-mouthed men and flashy
women. The bar-tender stirs up the brandy-smash. The bets run high.
The greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put in their money soon enough
to lose it. Three weeks before the race takes place the struggle is
decided, and the men in the secret know on which steed to bet their
money. The two men on the horses riding around long before arranged
who shall beat.

Leaning from the stand or from the carriage are men and women so
absorbed in the struggle of bone and muscle and mettle that they make
a grand harvest for the pickpockets, who carry off the pocket-books
and portemonnaies. Men looking on see only two horses with two riders
flying around the ring; but there is many a man on that stand whose
honor and domestic happiness and fortune--white mane, white foot,
white flank--are in the ring, racing with