And now let us bring to mind the plain truth that
these jockeys are only uneducated and promoted stable-boys after all. Is
it not a wonder that we can pick out a single honest man from their
midst? Vast sums depend on their exertions, and they are surrounded by a
huge crowd of moneyed men who will stand at nothing if they can gain
their ends; their unbalanced, sharp little minds are always open to
temptation; they see their brethren amassing great fortunes, and they
naturally fall into line and proceed, when their turn comes, to grab as
much money as they can. Not long ago the inland revenue officials, after
minute investigation, assessed the gains of one wee creature at L9,000
per year. This pigmy is now twenty-six years of age, and he earned as
much as the Lord Chancellor, and more than any other judge, until a jury
decided his fate by giving him what the Lord Chief Justice called "a
contemptuous verdict." Another jockey paid income-tax on L10,000 a year,
and a thousand pounds is not at all an uncommon sum to be paid merely as
a retainer. Forty or fifty years ago a jockey would not have dreamed of
facing his employer otherwise than cap in hand, but the value of
stable-boys has gone up in the market, and Lear's fool might now say,
"Handy-Dandy! Who is your jockey now and who is your master?" The little
men gradually gather a kind of veneer of good manners, and some of them
can behave very much like pocket editions of gentlemen, but the scent of
the stable remains, and, whether the jockey is a rogue or passably
honest, he remains a stable-boy to the end.
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