Here then is another vast engine of demoralization set going, just as if the Turf were not a blight of sufficient intensity!  A young man ventures into one of those cruel rings, buys a card, and resolves to risk pounds or shillings.  If he is unfortunate, he may be saved; but, curiously enough, it often happens that a greenhorn who does not know one greyhound from another blunders into a series of winning bets.  If he wins, he is lost, for the fever seizes him; he does not know what odds are against him, and he goes on from deep to deep of failure and disaster.  Well for him if he escapes entire ruin!  I have drawn attention to this new evil because I have peculiar opportunities of studying the inner life of our society, and I find that the gambling epidemic is spreading among the middle-classes.  To my mind these coursing massacres should be made every whit as illegal as dog-fighting or bull-baiting, for I can assure our legislators that the temptation offered by the chances of rapid gambling is eating like a corrosive poison into the young generation.  Surely Englishmen, even if they want to bet, need not invent a medium for betting which combines every description of noxious cruelty!  I ask the aid of women.  Let them set their faces against tin’s horrid sport, and it will soon be known no more.

If the silly bettors themselves could only understand their own position, they might be rescued.  Let it be distinctly understood that the bookmaker cannot lose, no matter how events may go.  On the other hand, the man who makes wagers on what he is pleased to term his “fancies” has everything against him.  The chances of his choosing a winner in the odious new sport are hardly to be mathematically stated, and it may be mathematically proved that he must lose.  Then, apart from the money loss, what an utterly ignoble and unholy pursuit this trapped-hare coursing is for a manly man!  Surely the heart of compassion in any one not wholly brutalized should be moved at the thought of those cabined, cribbed, confined little creatures that yield up their innocent lives amid the remorseless cries of a callous multitude.  Poor innocents!  Is it not possible to gamble without making God’s creatures undergo torture?  If a man were to turn a cat into a close yard and set dogs upon it, he would be imprisoned, and his name would be held up to scorn.  What is the difference between cat and hare?

March, 1887.

LIBERTY.

“What things are done in thy name!” The lady who spoke thus of Liberty had lived a high and pure life; all good souls were attracted to her; and it seems strange that so sweet and pure and beautiful a creature could have grown up in the vile France of the days before the Revolution.  She kept up the traditions of gentle and seemly courtesy even at times when Sardanapalus Danton was perforce admitted to her salon; and in an age of suspicion and vile scandal she kept a stainless name, for even the