Never mind what you pay for information if it gives
you a point the better of other men. Keep your agents honest if you can,
but, if they happen to be dishonest under pressure of circumstances,
take care at any rate that you are not found out." In short, the Ring is
mainly made up of men who pay with scrupulous honesty when they lose,
but who take uncommonly good care to reduce the chances of losing to a
minimum. Are they in the wrong? It depends. I shall not, at the present
moment, go into details; I prefer to pause 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.
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