About two years ago, an exasperating, soft-headed boy brought a colossal
fortune into the Ring. I never pitied him much; I only longed to see him
placed in the hands of a good schoolmaster who knew how to use a birch.
This piteous wretch, with his fatuous airs of sharpness, was exactly the
kind of game that the bookmakers cared to fly at; he was cajoled and
stimulated; he was trapped at every turn; the vultures flapped round
him; and there was no strong, wise man to give the booby counsel or to
drag him by main force from his fate. There was no pity for the boy's
youth; he was a mark for every obscene bird of prey that haunts the
Turf; respectable betting men gave him fair play, though they exacted
their pound of flesh; the birds of Night gave him no fair play at all.
In a few short months he had poured a quarter of a million into the
bursting pockets of the Ring, and he was at last "posted" for the paltry
sum of L1,400. This tragic farce was not enacted in a corner; a hundred
journals printed every act as it was played; the victim never received
that one hearty flogging which might have saved him, and the curtain was
at last rung down on a smug, grinning group of bookmakers, a deservedly
ruined spendthrift, and a mob of indifferent lookers-on.
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