The disease from which this
pleasing pillar of the State suffers has spread, with more or less
virulence, to the furthermost recesses of our towns, and you must know
the fringe of the Turf world before you can so much as guess what the
symptoms are like.
Here is a queer kind of a world which has suddenly arisen! Faith and
trust are banished; real honesty is unknown; purity is less than a name;
manliness means no more than a certain readiness to use the fists. Most
of the dwellers in this atmosphere are punctilious about money payments
because they durst not be otherwise, but the fine flower of real probity
does not flourish in the mephitic air. To lie, to dodge, to take mean
advantages--these are the accomplishments which an ugly percentage of
middle-class youths cultivate, and all the mischief arises from the fact
that they persist in trying to ape the manners of the most unworthy
members of an order to which they do not belong. It is bad enough when a
rich and idle man is bitten with the taste for betting, but when he is
imitated by the tailor's assistant who carries his clothes home, then we
have a still more unpleasant phenomenon to consider. For it is fatal to
a nation when any large and influential section of the populace once
begin to be confused in their notions of right and wrong.
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