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Updated: June 22, 2025
He spoke a word to the negro sentinel of a house in the West Forties, and was admitted to quiet, padded rooms, containing everything which is necessary to separate hopeful persons from their money. In one room a number of book-makers were whiling away the hot afternoon with poker for small stakes. In another room, played upon by an electric fan, sat Mr. Lichtenstein, the proprietor.
All is over in less than two minutes and the crowd goes pell-mell back to the book-makers' enclosure, hoping for better luck over the next race on the card. If rupees were dollars, the financial aspect of a Bombay racing day would be important. Kipling wrote true when he called Bombay "India's Queen City." It lacks the depressing influences of Calcutta, as well as the odors.
The cries of the book-makers rose, strident, from the betting-ring; on the tracks the jockeys, exercising or trying out their mounts, were, each after his own kind, preparing for the struggle of their lives; stable-boys, and the hundred other species of race-track hangers-on which swarm at such times to the front, were everywhere in evidence; touts with shifty eyes slipped, here and there, among the sightseers, looking for some credulous one who might be willing to pay well for doubtful information.
This contrivance would have beaten Hercules and made him seem idle to any one not in the secret. In short this little blockhead bade fair to become one of Mr. Carlyle's great men. He combined the earnest sneak with the earnest butcher. Barbarous times are not wholly expunged as book-makers affect to fear. Such a black ray of the narrow, self-deceiving, stupid, bloody past was earnest Hawes.
When Don Mike had collected his share of the purse and the book-makers, convinced that they had been out-generaled and not swindled, had issued checks for their losses and departed, smiling, John Parker drew Farrel aside. "Son," he demanded, "did you spoil the Egyptians and put over a Roman holiday?" Again Don Mike smiled his enigmatic smile.
Some of the loveliest women who walk the earth are found among doctors, among professors, among book-makers, among farmers, even. You think there is less chance for girls to work than for boys?
He seemed to be gentlemanly, but I derive no pleasure from my interviews with book-makers. I have either to appear uncivil, or run the risk of being dragged before the public.... I am, "Always as ever, your father, R. E. Lee. "General Wm. H. Fitzhugh Lee." The Pamunkey was the name of the river on which the White House, my brother's estate, was situated.
Thomas Carlyle said of her "Lives of the Buckminsters," "that it gave an insight into the real life of the highest natures," "that it had given him a much better account of character in New England than anything he had seen since Franklin." We hail a production like this, so scholarlike and serene, so remote from the trivialities and vulgarities of ambitious book-makers, with pleasure and pride.
"There 's nothing in this race but Maid Marian," said Murray, scanning the blackboards critically; "but 4 to 5 is the best I see on her, and I want even money or nothing" the which was largely Greek to me until by questioning and deduction I found the situation in English to be as follows: Maid Marian was judged on breeding and past performance to be much the best horse in the race, so much so that although about to run with five or six other racers, the book-makers demanded odds from those who bet on her in the ratio of 5 to 4.
But, when he pushed his way into the arena, he found so little was thought of his choice that as high as twenty to one was being offered, and with few takers. The fact shattered his confidence. Here were two hundred book-makers, trained to their calling, anxious at absurd odds to back their opinion that the horse he liked could not win.
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