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Updated: May 19, 2025
When the history of our decline and fall comes to be Written by some Australian Gibbon, the historian may choose the British bully and turfite to set alongside of the awful creatures who preyed on the rich fools of wicked old Rome.
An old hand the Odysseus of racing once said to me: "No man on earth would ever be allowed to take a hundred thousand pounds out of the Ring: they wouldn't allow it, they wouldn't That young fool must drop all he's got." We were speaking about a youthful madman who was just then being plucked to the last feather, and I knew that the old turfite was right.
It seemed that the departed turfite had been to use blunt English a very skilful and successful swindler. He would buy a horse which took his fancy, and he would run the animal again and again, until people got tired of seeing such a useless brute taken down to the starting-point. The handicappers finally let our schemer's horse in at a trifling weight, and then he prepared for business.
De Breulh was passionately fond of horses; but he was really a lover of them, and not a mere turfite, and this was all that the world knew of the man who held in his hands the fates of Sabine de Mussidan and Andre. As soon as he caught sight of Sabine he made a profound inclination. The girl came straight up to him.
Jerry, the smiling, delightful youth, is one of those odious pests who hang about in sporting company, and who are contemned and shunned by respectable racing men. Said a grave turfite to me last week, "Call those sportsmen! I'd I'd " but he could not invent a doom horrid enough for them, so he changed the subject with a mighty snort. There is no knowing what gentlemen like Jerry will do.
Twelve o'clock struck, and no signs as yet of the Leroy party; that is to say, with the exception of one man, namely, Mr. Jasper Vermont. "Your swells are always late," said a thick-lipped turfite, biting his stubby pencil prior to booking a favourable bet. "They gives any money for style, an' plays it high on us. It ain't their way to be to time for anything, not they only us poor chaps."
As the jockey grows older and is freed from his apprenticeship he becomes a more and more important personage; if his weight keeps well within limits he can ride four or five races every day during the season; he draws five guineas for a win, and three for the mount, and he picks up an infinite number of unconsidered trifles in the way of presents, since the turfite, bad or good, is invariably a cheerful giver.
Benjamin Buckram, the gentleman with the small independence of his own, we are sorry to say has gone to the 'bad. Aggravated by the loss he sustained by his horse winning the steeple-chase, he made an ill-advised onslaught on the cash-box of the London and Westminster Bank; and at three score years and ten this distinguished 'turfite, who had participated with impunity in nearly all the great robberies of the last forty years, was doomed to transportation.
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