Gentlemen, who usually take the names of well-known jockeys or trainers,
offer to make your fortune on the most ridiculously easy terms. You
forward a guinea or half-a-guinea, and an obliging prophet will show you
how to ruin the bookmakers. Old Tom Tompkins has a "glorious success"
every week; Joe, and Bill, and Harry, and a good score more, are always
ready to prove that they named the winner of any given race; one of
these fellows advertises under at least a dozen different names, and he
is able to live in great style and keep a couple of secretaries,
although he cannot write a letter or compose a circular. The _Sporting
Times_ will not allow one of these vermin to advertise in its columns,
and it has exposed all their dodges in the most conclusive and trenchant
set of articles that I ever saw; but other journals admit the
advertisements at prices which seem well-nigh prohibitive, and they are
content to draw from L15 to L20 per day by blazoning forth false
pretences. I have had much fun out of these "tipsters," for they are
deliciously impudent blackguards. A fellow will send you the names of
six horses--all losers; in two days he will advertise--"I beg to
congratulate all my patrons.
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