and ask what can be expected to result from the wolfish scheme of Turf morality which I have indicated.  I do not compare it with the rules which guide our host of commercial middlemen, because, if I did, I should say that the betting men have rather the best of the comparison:  I keep to the Turf, and I want to know what broad consequences must emanate from a body which organizes plans for plunder and veils them under the forms of honesty.  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.  The Ring is a close body, and I have only known about four men who ever managed to beat the confederacy in the long run.  There is one astute, taciturn, inscrutable organizer whom the bookmakers dread a little, because he happens to use their own methods; he will scheme for a year or two if necessary until he succeeds in placing a horse advantageously, and he usually brings off his coup just at the time when the Ring least like it.  “They don’t yell like that when one of mine rolls home,” he once said, while the bookmakers were clamouring with delight over the downfall of a favourite; and indeed this wily master of deceptions has very often made the pencillers draw long faces.  But the case of the Turf Odysseus is not by any means typical; the man stands almost alone, and his like will not be seen again for many a day.  The rule is that the backer must come to grief in the long run, for every resource of chicanery, bribery, and resolute keenness is against him.  He is there to be plundered; it is his mission in life to lose, or how could the bookmakers maintain their mansions and carriages?  It matters little what the backer’s capital may be at starting, he will lose it all if he is idiot enough to go on to the end, for he is fighting against unscrupulous legions.  One well-known bookmaker coolly announced in 1888 that he had written off three hundred thousand pounds of bad debts.  Consider what a man’s genuine business must be like when he can jauntily allude to three hundred thousands as a bagatelle by the way.  That same man has means of obtaining “information” sufficient to discomfit any poor gambler who steps into the Ring and expects to beat the bookmakers by downright above-board dealing.  As soon as he begins to lay heavily against a horse the animal is regarded as doomed to lose by all save the imbeciles who persist in hoping against hope.  In 1889 this betting man made a dead set at the favourite for the Two Thousand Guineas.  The colt was known to be the best of his year; he was trained in a stable which has the best of reputations; his exercise was uninterrupted, and mere amateurs fancied they had only to lay heavy odds on him in order to put