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A description is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of an Australian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a habitué of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron of art and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices.

The most! unsatisfactory material consists of those officers who, on account of inherited wealth, look upon their profession as a kind of sport, attractive, abounding in superficial honours, and for that reason very agreeable. These latter are apt to regard court ball-rooms and racecourses as more important fields of action than drill-grounds and barracks.

There, it is plain enough to me that you were all in the wrong, and I feel greatly annoyed to find my young gentlemen conducting themselves like the disreputable low boys who frequent the fairs and racecourses of the county. Look at yourselves. Did you ever see such a ghastly sight? Burr major, your face is horrible. As for you, Dicksee, I am ashamed of you.

The farmer, in the coming years, when eggs to town he brings, will flop along above the trees, upon his rusty wings. The doctor, when he has a call, from patients far or near, will quickly strap his pinions on, and hit the atmosphere. And airship racing then will be the sport to please the crowds; there'll be racecourses overhead, and grandstands in the clouds.

The list promised much agreeable intercourse, but it was wholly lacking in unexpectedness. He had been through it all before, and knew how each story would end. In mutual indifference or in a tiff because he wearied of accompanying her to all racecourses and all theatres. Another would pretend that her husband was jealous, and that she daren't come to see him any more.

They seem to think that the noble foundations of our old universities are hardly fulfilling their functions in their present posture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, where men are trained to win a senior wranglership, or a double-first, as horses are trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needs of after-life in the case of a man as in that of the racer.

Allusion was made to well-known stories about the robberies which are winked at on racecourses, but on this occasion the great name of Vandeuvres put a stop to all such accusations, and the skeptics in the end prevailed when they prophesied that Nana would come in last of all. "Who's riding Nana?" queried La Faloise.

I wish now I had thought of securing trustworthy statistics with respect to the number of people who present themselves on the colonial racecourses within the limit of a year. It would be interesting to know what proportion of the population is given over to the breeding and training of horseflesh and the riding of races.

Not being married, Lord David and Lady Josiana could show themselves together in public without exciting ridicule, and they did so frequently. They often went to plays and racecourses in the same carriage, and sat together in the same box. They were chilled by the impending marriage, which was not only permitted to them, but imposed upon them; but they felt an attraction for each other's society.

Having no intellectual resources wherewith to beguile the tedium of his idle prosperous life, he was fain to seek pleasure in the companionship of other men; and had thus become a haunter of tavern parlours and small racecourses, being always ready for any amusement his friends proposed to him.