They
may make a chance visit to a racecourse, but the speed and beauty of the
animals do not interest them in any way; they cannot judge the skill of
a rider; they have no eye for anything but money. To them a horse is
merely a name; and, so far from their racing pursuits bringing them
health, they prefer staying in a low club or lower public-house, where
they may gamble without being obliged to trouble themselves about the
nobler animals on which they bet.
The crowd on a racecourse is always a hideous spectacle. The class of
men who swarm there are amongst the worst specimens of the human race,
and, when a stranger has wandered among them for an hour or so, he feels
as though he had been gazing at one huge, gross, distorted face. Their
language is many degrees below vulgarity; in fact, their coarseness can
be understood only by people who have been forced to go much amongst
them--and that perhaps is fortunate. The quiet stoical aristocrats in
the special enclosures are in all ways inoffensive; they gamble and
gossip, but their betting is carried on with still self-restraint, and
their gossip is the ordinary polished triviality of the country-house
and drawing-room. But what can be said of the beings who crowd the
betting-ring? They are indeed awful types of humanity, fitted to make
sensitive men shudder.
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