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And then he must needs have me down in the country, to lead the life of a nun, lest I should dishonour him or bring him to ruin; as if he had not been ten times worse every way, with his betting-book, and his gaming- table, and his opera-girls, and his Lady This and Mrs. That yes, and his bottles of wine, and glasses of brandy-and-water too!
When once Money-hunger seizes on a nation, that primitive and wholesome Earth-hunger old as the primal Eden, where man's life began is stifled at the birth; the spade and harrow rust, and instead of swords being beaten to ploughshares, ploughshares are beaten into swords for the use of soldiers who are the gladiators of commercial avarice; the wealth of the country runs into the swamp of speculation; the scripture of Nature is cast aside for the blotted pages of the betting-book; sport becomes not a means of recreation but of gambling; and instead of sturdy races bred upon the soil, and drawing from the soil solid qualities of mind and body, you have blighted and anaemic races, bred amid the populous disease of cities, and incapable of any task that shall demand steady energy, continuous thought, or sober powers of reflection or of will.
But Pendennis of Boniface had the advantage over all these young gentlemen, his friends and associates, of a universality of taste: and whereas young Lord Paddington did not care twopence for the most beautiful print, or to look into any gilt frame that had not a mirror within it; and Guttlebury did not mind in the least how he was dressed, and had an aversion for horse exercise, nay a terror of it; and Snaffle never read any printed works but the 'Racing Calendar' or 'Bell's Life, or cared for any manuscript except his greasy little scrawl of a betting-book: our Catholic-minded young friend occupied himself in every one of the branches of science or pleasure above-mentioned, and distinguished himself tolerably in each.
His lifted hand, solemnly emphasizing what he said, dropped at his side. He closed his eyes; and fell into a heavy stertorous sleep. Give him his due. Scoundrel as he was, give him his due. The awful moment, when his life was trembling in the balance, found him true to the last living faith left among the men of his tribe and time the faith of the betting-book. Sir Patrick and Mr.
Between times, she studied the fashion papers, and formed her style in reading the "Vie Parisienne," whose most enigmatic articles had no allusions sufficiently obscure to escape her penetration. She learned to ride on horseback, to fence and to shoot, and distinguished herself at pigeon-matches. She kept a betting-book, played Trente et Quarante at Monaco; and Baccarat had no secrets for her.
Strangers had no chance in those days on the heath: and, though dazzled by the splendour and fashion assembled there, and surrounded by the greatest persons of the land, the royal dukes, with their wives and splendid equipages; old Grafton, with his queer bevy of company, and such men as Ancaster, Sandwich, Lorn, a man might have considered himself certain of fair play and have been not a little proud of the society he kept; yet, I promise you, that, exalted as it was, there was no set of men in Europe who knew how to rob more genteelly, to bubble a stranger, to bribe a jockey, to doctor a horse, or to arrange a betting-book.
He had them both; and though the black-leg might quail before the awful scrutiny of his piercing eye, there never was a man so scrupulously polite to his inferiors as Lord George Bentinck. The turf, too, was not merely the scene of the triumphs of his stud and his betting-book.
He heard voices, and saw men whom not to challenge, or try a result with, was to acknowledge oneself mean, and to abandon the manliness of life. Algernon's betting-book was soon out and in operation.
Not long ago there was a story going the rounds of the press, of some spicy sporting operations in England, in which one trainer and jockey threw one of his creatures, in the disguise of a stable-boy, into the stables of another, to watch the appearance and action of his horses, to overhear what he could of the conversation of the trainer, to discover for what cups and matches they were about to be entered, and to make weekly reports to him, through letters pretendedly addressed to the boy's "mother," so that he could take advantage of the knowledge so unfairly attained, in making up his betting-book.
My cousin Guy Rathbone is engaged to a specimen of a new variety, one of the 'emancipated, forsooth; a woman who has a betting-book instead of a Bible and plays cards all day Sunday.
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