hot for them, they betake themselves to Liverpool,
or Leeds; and when those become too
hot, they emigrate to Manchester or Birmingham.
If prosperous, a welcher will perhaps
take a low public-house, which becomes the
resort of similar scoundrels; if he do not get
on, after two or three years of provincial life,
he returns to London, and ends in a police office
and a jail.

Among the outside public there is an idea
that the whole betting world regulates its financial
operations very much by relying on information
obtained from training stables, through
persons who betray the trust reposed in them,
and who divulge secrets respecting this horse
beating his stable companion at a trial; that
filly breaking down at exercise, or the other
colt going wrong in his fetlock. This means
of gaining information, however, is altogether a
thing of the past. Ask any bookmaker what
rule he observes in his betting throughout the
year, and he will reply that he "follows the
money." He means that the market price of
each horse guides him in all his speculations, and
that of the quality or qualification of the horses he
knows little or nothing. The said "money," or
"market price"—the betting odds, in fact—are
much more influenced by the owners of the horses
wanting to push up or pull down their horses
in the betting, than by any capabilities, or want
of the same, in the horses themselves. Of course,
when the owner of a really good horse thinks that
the animal has a good chance to win a certain
race, he backs him; but rarely without making
his money safe by hedging upon some other horse
in the same race. And in the same way, when
a horse is considered quite unfit to run, he is
generally "scratched" out of the race, or
allowed to start merely to make the running for
some other horse. It is only when the
competing horses are actually at the post, just before
starting, that their condition causes any change
worth speaking of in the odds; and even then the
cautious betters prefer bookmaking upon figures
to betting upon the horses. Racing as now
conducted is a pure matter of money making, and
races might just as well be run by costermongers'
donkeys as by the best blood in
England, so far as it is conducive to any
improvement in the breed of horses, apart from
racing purposes.

AN UNOFFICIAL REPORT.

IN a recent number of All the Year Round,
the published opinions of certain practical men
reporting their impressions of what they saw
at Paris, when visiting that city on the occasion
of the Great Exhibition, were made the
subject of an article. That article, and those
reports reviewed in it, reminded me of some
professional strictures made by a representative
of a very different industry from any of
those reported on to the Society of Arts.

One day last season, when the Paris Exhibition
was in the fulness of its popularity, and
when excursions for the benefit of all conditions
of men were thriving, I crossed from
Boulogne to Dover aboard a steamboat crammed
from end to end with passengers.

Among that large assembly, was an individual
personage who particularly attracted my
attention, and whom I continually found
myself staring at, with a persistency hardly
consistent with the rules of good-breeding, as laid
down by the best authorities on general etiquette.
I think it must have been a certain incongruousness
in the look of this personage which
made me stare at him so much. The man and
his costume, or "get up," as the slang of the
day goes, were so entirely inconsistent and at
variance with each other. They told two
different tales in unmistakable, though inarticulate,
language. Let me try to translate their silent
evidence into words.

To begin with, then, so far as his hair and
his headdress went, this small personage—for
he was short of stature and light in build—was,
to all appearance, a Frenchman; his hair being
cut exceedingly short, and the cap he wore
upon his head being of that peculiar kind which
is known in France as a helmet-cap: a
headdress now almost confined to omnibus
conductors, but which used formerly to be much worn
by the guards of diligences and others. He
wore, moreover, a short boy's jacket with an
upright collar, like a soldier's. This garment
was, however, worn open, and was of a dark
brown, or invisible green tint, it was difficult
to see which. With this jacket the sum of
those indications which seemed to point to
French origin came to an end. The gentleman's
legs, which were somewhat bowed, were
unmistakably English; and as to his face,
though he was closely shaved, except as to his
upper lip (on which there was about a week's
growth of hair), it was the most indubitably
English face you could desire to see—English in
feature, in expression, in colour. As to his
social standing, it was evident that he belonged
to what is mysteriously called the "working
class," and had it been necessary to define his
position with nicer accuracy, I think I should
have been disposed to attribute to him a
connexion with that branch of industry which is
carried on in stables and straw yards. Such a
guess would not have been very far from the
mark, as it afterwards turned out.

It surprised me to see the person whom I
have thus attempted to sketch travelling by
a boat which was not an excursion boat, and
apparently alone. For, he belonged to a class
of travellers, who travel for the most part in
large numbers, and by excursion trains. Here
was another thing to stimulate my curiosity.
I ought to mention, by the way, that the question
of his nationality had been set at rest
by a few words which he had spoken in
unmistakable, if not "very choice," English. I was
not long in carrying out my determination to get
into conversation with this personage. We were
standing close together in the forward part of
the ship, whither I had gone to smoke, and I