So it comes
about that we have amidst us a school of skinny dwarfs whose leaders are
paid better than the greatest statesmen in Europe. The commonest
jockey-boy in this company of manikins can usually earn more than the
average scholar or professional man, and the whole set receive a good
deal more of adulation than has been bestowed on any soldier, sailor,
explorer, or scientific man of our generation. And what is the
life-history of the jockey? A tiny boy is bound apprentice, and
submitted to the discipline of a training stable; he goes through the
long routine of morning gallops, trials, and so forth, and when he
begins to show signs of aptitude he is put up to ride for his master in
public. If he is a born horseman, like Archer or Robinson, he may make
his mark long before his indentures are returned to him, and he is at
once surrounded by a horde of flatterers who do their best to spoil him.
There is no cult so distinguished by slavishness, by gush, by
lavishness, as jockey-worship, and a boy needs to have a strong head and
sound, careful advisers, if he is to escape becoming positively
insufferable. When the lad Robinson won the St. Leger, after his horse
had been left at the post, he was made recipient of the most frantic and
silly toadyism that the mind can conceive; the clever trainer to whom he
was apprenticed received L1,500 for transferring the little fellow's
services, and he is now a celebrity who probably earns a great deal more
than Professor Owen or Mr.
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