United States or Syria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Given, a large house, music, piazzas, beaches, cliff, port, griddle-cakes, fast horses, sherry-cobblers, ten-pins, dust, artificial flowers, innocence, worn-out hearts, loveliness, black-legs, bank-bills, small men, large coat-sleeves, little boots, jewelry, and polka-redowas ad libitum, to produce August in Newport. For my part, Miss Minerva, I like it. But it is a dizzy and perilous game.
And now but one day more remains of our six months' leave. The 31st of October sees us again fairly in the hands of the authorities. Brothers in arms, who during our absence have been having "all work and no play," receive us with warm and disinterested welcome. The Q.M.G. is hauled away in triumph by a swarm of fellow black-legs to glad the squaw-like partner of his sooty bosom.
Even if the simpleton chooses the very best horse in a race, it by no means follows that the creature will win nay, the very excellence of an animal is all against its chances of success. The Ring which is largely composed of well-to-do black-legs will not let any man win too much.
I shall stick by the others and see what they do." "You're to pass the word, they say, to keep massed. I suppose their game is that small bodies can be dispersed, but we can't be touched if we're all caked together. You'd better pass that on and explain it." "There are to be no dam black-legs. I've just heard that any who slink off will be mobbed." "What are we waiting for? Can't say.
And yet I could watch them go with a lighter heart, God knows, than that with which I foresee the misery that's coming to these people of mine, who are going to starve at the bidding of a band of black-legs, and that not even because they think their cause a just one, but simply because they can't help themselves.
He knew some anecdotes about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never saw anything like it.
Never did a legislative enactment work such improvement among the masses as this bill. It completely banished all needy souls and black-legs from the arena of honest sport, and left the field to those who came out of an afternoon and evening to enjoy themselves in an honest way.
Next morning their organ protested, and gave the number of the black-legs and their names into the bargain! This was a smack! A good one this; it brought a light to the thin, impassive faces. There was an answer to the trick of the other day! This Pelle was a deuce of a fellow! Three cheers for "Lightning Pelle!" Hip, hip, hurrah!
One sees down it dogs paid by the hour and by the piece, and then dogs asking for better pay and shorter hours, and, finally, dogs on strike, and dog "black-legs," or "free dogs." A word should be said as to the authenticity of the stories in the present volume.
The resorts of black-legs, and the betting-books of men on the turf, the dishonourable payment of so-called debts of honour, the trickery of horse-dealers, horse-trainers, and horse-racers, and the wretched madness of professed gamblers, are things we have all heard of, but of which, happily, comparatively few of us know much, practically.
Word Of The Day