Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his most wicked sentences, said
that the jockey is our Western substitute for the eunuch; a noble duke,
who ought to know something about the matter, lately informed the world
through the medium of a court of law with an oath that "jockeys are
thieves." Now, I know one jockey whose character is not embraced by the
duke's definition, and I have heard that there are two, but I am not
acquainted with the second man. The wonder is, considering the
harebrained, slavering folly of the public, that any of the riding
manikins are half as honest as they are; the wonder is that their poor
little horsey brains are not led astray in such fashion as to make every
race a farce. They certainly do try their best on occasion, and I
believe that there are many races which are _not_ arranged before the
start; but you cannot persuade the picked men of the rascals' corps that
any race is run fairly. When Melton and Paradox ran their tremendous
race home in the Derby, I heard quite a number of intelligent gentry
saying that Paradox should have won but for the adjectived and
participled propensities of his jockey. Nevertheless, although most
devout turfites agree with the emphatic duke, they do not idolize their
diminutive fetishes a whit the less; they worship the manikin with a
touching and droll devotion, and, when they know him to be a confirmed
scamp, they admire his cleverness, and try to find out which way the
little rogue's interest lies, so that they may follow him.
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