The 'Grand Aristocratic Stakes,' of 20 sovs. each, half-forfeit, and
L5 only if declared, &c. The winner to give two dozen of champagne to the
ordinary, and the second horse to save his stake. Gentlemen riders (titled
ones to be allowed 3 lb.). Over about three miles of fine hunting country,
under the usual steeple-chase conditions.
Then the game of the 'Peeping Toms,' and 'Sly Sams,' and 'Infallible Joes,'
and 'Wideawake Jems,' with their tips and distribution of prints began; Tom
counselling his numerous and daily increasing clients to get well on to No.
9, Sardanapalus (the Bart., as Watchorn called him), while 'Infallible Joe'
recommended his friends and patrons to be sweet on No. 6 (Hercules), and
'Wide-awake Jem' was all for something else. A gentleman who took the
trouble of getting tips from half a dozen of them, found that no two of
them agreed in any particular. What information to make books upon!
'But what good,' as our excellent friend Thackeray eloquently asks, 'ever
came out of, or went into, a betting book? If I could be CALIPH
OMAR for a week,' says he, 'I would pitch every one of those
despicable manuscripts into the flames; from my-lord's, who is "in" with
Jack Snaffle's stable, and is overreaching worse-informed rogues, and
swindling greenhorns, down to Sam's, the butcher's boy, who books
eighteen-penny odds in the tap-room, and stands to win five-and-twenty
bob.
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