Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851

The next day the bazaar was crowded with dealers in and diggers for precious stones. Hundreds of Moormen, Chitties, Arabs, Parsees, and Singalese were busily employed in barter; and a most noisy operation it was. In the neighborhood of Ratnapoora exist many tracts of clayey and gravelly land, rich in rubies, sapphires, garnets, turquoise, and cat's-eyes. For the privilege of digging for these, or of sifting them from the sands of some of the rivers, the natives pay heavy rents to Government; often sub-letting the ground, at large profits, to needy speculators. Their harvest is usually offered for sale during the Peraharra; and, be their gains what they may, they are generally rid of the whole amount before the end of the festival. The existence of this source of wealth is, unfortunately, a bane, rather than a blessing, to the district; for whole villages flock to the ruby-grounds, delving and sifting for weeks together, utterly neglecting their rice-fields and gardens. Arrack taverns have multiplied, intemperance has increased, long tracts of fertile land have ceased to be sown with paddy, and the country-people now buy their food from strangers, in place of growing it, as formerly. It will be a happy time for Saffragam when its stores of precious stones shall be exhausted; for not till then will peaceful industry be once more sought.

Struggling and forcing a way through the busy crowd were to be seen one or two Hindoo fakeers, most repulsive objects, depending for subsistence on the alms of pilgrims and others. One of these wretched creatures, in the fulfillment of a vow, or as an act of fancied righteousness, had held his left arm for so many years erect above his head, that it could not now be moved – and grew transfixed, emaciated, and bony. It seemed more like a dry, withered stick tied to the body than a part of itself. The other fakeer had closed his hands so long that the finger-nails had grown quite through the palms, and projected at the back of them; these miserable-looking objects appeared to reap a tolerable harvest, and seemed to be then in no pain.

Under the shade of a banyan tree, a grave-looking Moorman was amusing a crowd of boys and women with the recital of some wonderful or silly legend. The trade of story-telling, in the East, is still a profitable one, if I might judge from the comfortable appearance of this well-clad talker.

When I left Ratnapoora, crowds were still flocking into the town, for on the morrow the huge temple elephants were expected to march in procession through the place, decked out in all sorts of finery, and bearing the casket and relic; but it was a wearisome spectacle, and I was heartily glad to find myself once more on my pony, quietly winding through green paddyfields and under shady topes.

A TOBACCO FACTORY IN SPAIN

This is the most immense establishment of the kind in Spain, and is devoted exclusively to the manufacture of snuff and cigars. "Chewing" is a habit to which the Spaniards are not addicted. Tobacco, being a government monopoly, yields an enormous revenue to the crown; the factories being the most extensive in the world, and the demand for the weed even greater than the supply. The Fabrica of Seville, though utterly devoid of architectural merit, is only surpassed in size by the famous monastery of the Escurial. It is six hundred and sixty-two feet in length, by five hundred and twenty-four in width: having been erected by a fat Dutchman about the middle of the last century, its slight claims to symmetry and elegance are in no degree to be wondered at. Its substantiality, however, and excellent adaptation to the purposes for which it was intended, render it well worthy of a careful examination, either by the fastidious cigar-smoker or indefatigable snuff-taker. For the edification of such in particular have we undertaken this brief description of the edifice.

Within its walls it has twenty-eight courts, while externally the building is encompassed by a deep moat, in order to guard against the possibility of smuggling on the part of the operatives. The number of persons usually employed, ranges from five to six thousand, though several thousand additional hands are sometimes called into requisition in years of extraordinary demand. By far the greater proportion of these are females, perhaps even four-fifths. Our application for admission was readily granted, and such was the politeness of the managers, that they put us immediately under the charge of a young Spaniard connected with the building, with instructions to him to show us every part of the establishment which we might desire to see. This mission he performed to our entire satisfaction. We soon dispatched the snuff department which occupies the ground floor, and which gave us such a terrible fit of sneezing, that we were somewhat fearful our nasal organs would never recover from the severe shock they had experienced. None but males were employed in the snuff rooms, and more wretched-looking objects I think I never saw.

They were frightfully cadaverous and pale, showing distinctly in their countenances the pernicious influence of such a poisoned and tobacco impregnated atmosphere upon their constitutions. Their appearance was more like that of demons than human beings, and it was with a sense of the deepest aversion, that we left their dark and dismal quarters. Ascending to the upper story, we entered an immense hall, running nearly the whole length of the building, in which between three and four thousand females, seated at tables, were busily engaged in the manufacture of cigars. It was indeed a strange spectacle. Not a man was to be seen among the enormous concourse, and even had there been half a dozen, well might we have exclaimed, "What are these among so many?" The females were of every age, from childhood upward, and, as a general rule, their complexions were characterized by a sallow and unhealthy look. The animation which prevailed among them on our sudden advent, was perfectly overwhelming: such a din and clattering of voices were absolutely deafening. Every mouth was in rapid motion, and quite rivaled in its vibrations the meteoric movements of their hands. We were evidently the engrossing subject of conversation, and our vanity was consequently on the alert to overhear some of the remarks that were made, and thus discover what impression our appearance had caused upon the thickly-clustered damsels around us. But to our great dismay, we heard but little of a complimentary nature, which aroused our indignation to such a height, that we were half inclined to make a terrific charge amid the mighty throng, and seek revenge by kissing in turn each beautiful culprit upon whom we could lay our hands. But seriously, we saw very little beauty among them, which we attributed in a great measure to the unwholesome nature of their occupation. Certainly I never saw such a striking want of good looks among any other class in Spain. In Seville these girls are termed cigarreras, and they have a not very enviable reputation.

INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS

We must, in the first place, deny that there is any necessary connection between genius and vice, or madness, or eccentricity. Genius is a ray from heaven; and is naturally akin to all those things on earth "which are lovely and pure, and of a good report." Its very name shows its connection with the genial nature; its main moral element is love. Men are now in their hearts so conscious of this, that when they hear of instances of disconnection between genius and virtue, it is with a start of surprise and horror; and we believe that though all the men of genius who ever lived had been tainted with vice, still the thoughtful would have been slow of drawing the horrible inference, that the brightest and most divine-seeming power in the human mind was a fiend in the garb of a radiant angel, and would have sought elsewhere for the real solution of the problem. But when we remember that so many of this gifted order have been true to themselves and to their mission, the belief is strengthened, that the instances of a contrary kind can be accounted for upon principles or facts which leave intact alike the sanity, the health, and the morality, of genius per se.

Such principles and facts there do exist; and we now proceed to enumerate some of them. And first, some of the most flagrantly bad of literary men have had no real pretensions to genius. Savage, for example, Boyce, and Dermody, were men of tolerable talent, and intolerable impudence, conceit, and profligacy. Churchill was of a higher order, but has been ridiculously overrated by whoever it was that wrote a paper on him, not long since, in the "Edinburgh Review" – a disgraceful apology for a disgraceful and disgusting life. Swift and Chatterton, with all their vast talents, wanted, we think, the fine differentia, and the genial element of real poetic genius. And time would fail us to enumerate the hundreds of lesser spirits who have employed their small modica of light, which they mistook for genius, as lamps allowing them to see their way more clearly down to the chambers of death. Talent, however great, is not genius. Wit, however refined, is not genius. Learning, however profound, is not genius. But genius has been confounded not only with these respectable and valuable powers, but with glibness of speech, a knack of rhyming, the faculty of echoing others, elegance of language, fury of excitation, and a hundred other qualities, either mechanical or morbid, and then the faults of such feeble or diseased pretenders have been gravely laid down at the door of the insulted genius of poetry.

Secondly, real genius has not always received its due meed from the world. Like real religion, it has found itself in an enemy's land. Resisted, as it has often been, at every step, it has not been able uniformly to maintain the dignity, or to enjoy the repose, to which it was entitled. Men of genius have occasionally soured in temper, and this has bred now the savage satisfaction with which Dr. Johnson wrote and printed, in large capitals, the line in his "London" —

"Slow rises worth by poverty depressed;"

and now feelings still fiercer, more aggressive, and more destructive to the moral balance of the soul. It is a painful predicament in which the man of genius has often felt himself. Willing to give to all men a portion of the bread of life, and unable to obtain the bread that perisheth – balked in completing the unequal bargain of light from heaven with earthly pelf – carrying about fragments of God's great general book of truth from reluctant or contemptuous bookseller to bookseller – subject even after his generous and noble thoughts are issued to the world, to the faint praise, or chilly silence, or abusive fury of oracular dunces – to the spurn of any mean slave who can find an assassin's cloak in the "Anonymous," and who does not even, it may be, take the trouble of looking at the divine thing he stabs, but strikes in blind and brutal fury; such has been and is the experience of many of whom the world is not worthy; and can it be wondered at, that some of them sink in the strife, and that others, even while triumphing, do so at the expense of much of the bloom, the expansive generosity, the all-embracing sympathy which were their original inheritance? Think of Byron's first volume, trampled like a weed in the dust – of Shelley's magnificent "Revolt of Islam," insulted and chased out of public view – of Keats's first volume and its judicial murder – of other attempts, less successful, such as the treatment of Carlyle's "French Revolution," at its first appearance, by a weekly journal (the "Athenæum"), which now follows his proud path with its feeble and unaccepted adulation, and then speak with more pity of the aberrations into which the weaker sons of the muse have been hurried, and with more respect of the stern insulation and growing indifference to opinion and firmness of antagonistic determination which characterize her stronger children.

Thirdly, the aberrations of genius are often unduly magnified. The spots in a star are invisible – those in a sun are marked by every telescope. No man is a hero to his valet de chambre. And the reason often is, the valet is an observant but malicious and near-sighted fool. He sees the spots without seeing their small proportion to the magnitude of the orb. Nay, he creates spots if he can not see them. The servants of Mrs. Siddons, while she was giving her famous private readings from Milton and Shakspeare, thought their mistress mad, and used to say, "There's the old lady making as much noise as ever." Many and microscopic are the eyes which follow the steps of genius; and, too often, while they mark the mistakes, they are blind to the motives; to the palliations, to the resistance, and to the remorse. The world first idolizes genius – rates it even beyond its true worth – calls it perfect – remembers its divine derivation, but forgets that it must shine on us through earthly vessels, and then avenges on the earthly vessels the disappointment of its own exaggerated expectations. Hence each careless look, or word, or action of the hapless son of publicity, is noted, and, if possible, misinterpreted; his occasional high spirits are traced to physical excitement; his occasional stupidity voted a sin; his rapture and the reaction from it are both called in to witness against him: nay, an entire class of creatures arises, whose instinct it is to discover, and whose trade it is to tell his faults as a writer, and his failings as a man. It is under such a broad and searching glare, like that of a stage, that many men of warm temperament, strong passions, and sensitive feelings, have been obliged to play their part. And can we wonder that – sometimes sickened at the excessive and unnatural heat, sometimes dazzled by the overbearing and insolent light, and often disgusted at the falsehood of their position, and the cruelty or incompetence of their self-constituted judges – they have played it ludicrously or woefully ill?

But again, till of late, the moral nature, and moral culture of genius, were things ignored by general opinion, by critics, and even by men of genius themselves. Milton and a few others were thought lucky and strange exceptions to the general rule. The general rule was understood to be that the gifted were most apt to go astray – that the very light that was in them was darkness – that aberration, in a word, was the law of their goings. One of their own number said that

"The light that led astray,
Was light from heaven."

Critics, such as Hazlitt, too well qualified to speak of the errors of the genius which they criticised, were not content to palliate those by circumstances, but defended them on the dangerous principle of necessary connection. The powers of high intellect were magnified – its errors excused – and its solemn duties and responsibilities passed over in silence. The text, "Where much is given, much also shall be required," was seldom quoted. Genius was regarded as a chartered libertine – not as a child of divine law – guided, indeed, rather by the spirit than the letter, but still in accordance with law, as well as with liberty – as a capricious comet, not a planet, brighter and swifter than its fellows. Now, we think all this is changing, and that the true judges and friends of the poet, while admitting his fallibility, condemning his faults, and forewarning him of his dangers, are ever ready to contend that his gift is moral, that his power is conferred for holy purposes, that he is a missionary of God, in a lower yet lofty sense – and that if he desecrate his powers, he is a traitor to their original purposes, and shall share in the condemnation of that servant who "was beaten with many stripes." But must not the long – the written – the sung, the enacted prevalence of a contrary opinion – of a false and low idea of genius, as a mere minister of enjoyment, or child of impulse, irresponsible as the wind, have tended to perpetuate the evils it extenuated, and to render the gifted an easier prey to the temptations by which they were begirt, and infinitely less sensible to the mischiefs which their careless or vicious neglect of their high stewardship was certain to produce? Must they bear the whole blame? Must not a large portion of it accrue to the age in which they lived, and to that public opinion which they breathed like an atmosphere?

We attribute the higher and purer efforts which genius is beginning to make, both in art and in life, to the growing prevalence of a purer opinion, and of a more severe, yet charitable criticism. The public, indeed, has, as we have intimated above, much to learn yet, in its treatment of its gifted children; but the wiser and better among the critics have certainly been taught a lesson by the past. Into the judgment of literary works the consideration of their moral purpose has now entered as an irresistible element. And the same measure is also fast being applied, mercifully, yet sternly, to our literary men.

Finally, it follows from these remarks, that we expect every year to hear less and less of the aberrations of genius. And that for various reasons. First, fewer and fewer will, under our present state of culture, claim to be considered as men of genius, and the public is less likely to be troubled with the affected oddities of pretenders, and the niaiseries of monkeys run desperate. Then, again, the profession of letters is now less likely to be chosen by men of gifts, it is so completely overdone; and need we say, that as a profession, its exceeding precariousness and the indefinite position it gives to the literary man have been very pernicious to his morals and his peace. Then

"The old world is coming right,"

and as it rights, is learning more to respect the literary character, to understand its peculiar claims, and to allow for its sinless infirmities. Lastly – and chief of all, men of letters are beginning to awaken – are feeling the strong inspiration of common sense – are using literature less as a cripple's crutch and more as a man's staff – are becoming more charitable to each other, and are sensible with a profounder conviction that literature, as well as life, is a serious thing, and that for all its "idle words" they must give an account at the day of judgment. May this process be perfected in due time. And may all, however humble, who write, feel that they have each his special part to play in this work of perfectionment!

We are very far from being blind worshipers of Thomas Carlyle. We disapprove of much that he has written. We think, that unintentionally, he has done deep damage to the realities of faith, as well as to the "shams" of hypocrisy. He has gone out from the one ark and has not returned like the dove with the olive leaf – but rather, like the raven, strayed and croaked hopelessly over the carcasses of this weltering age. And our grief, at reading one or two of his recent pamphlets (which posterity will rank with such sins of power, as the wilder works of Swift and Byron), resembled that of a son whose father had disgraced his gray hairs by a crime or outrage. But even in the depth of this undiminished feeling of sorrow, we must acknowledge that no writer, save Milton and Wordsworth, has done so much in our country to restore the genuine respectability, and to proclaim the true mission of literature. In his hands and on his eloquent tongue it appears no idle toy for the amusement of the lovesick or the trifling – no mere excitement – but a profound, as well as beautiful reality – to be attested, if necessary, by a martyr's tears and blood, and at all events by the life and conversation of an honest and virtuous man. And he has himself so attested it. With Scott, literature was a great money-making machine. With Byron it was the trunk of a mad elephant, through which he squirted out his spite at man, his enmity at God, and his rage at even his own shadow. Carlyle has held his genius as a trust – has sought to unite it to his religion (whatever that may be) – has expressed it in the language of a determined life – and has made, by the power of his example, many to go and do likewise. If he has not produced a yet broader and more permanent effect – if Carlyleism, as a system, is fast weakening and dying away – if the young minds of the age are beginning to crave something better than a creed with no articles, a gospel of negations, a faith with no forms, a hope with no foundations, a Christianity without facts (like a man with life and blood, but without limbs)! the fault lies in the system, and not in the author of it. Although, to this also we are tempted to attribute his well-known disgust latterly at literature. He has tried to form his own sincere love and prosecution of it into a religion, and has failed. And why? Literature is only a subjective, and not an objective reality. It is made to adorn and explain religion – but no sincerity of prosecution, or depth of insight can change it into a religion itself. That must have not only an inward significance, but an outward sign, more vital and lasting than the Nature of the Poet. This the Christian finds in Jesus, and the glorious facts connected with him. But Carlyle, with all his deep earnestness, and purity of life, has become, we fear, a worshiper without a God, a devotee with the object of the devotion extinct – a strong swimmer in a Dead Sea, where no arm can cleave the salt and sluggish waters – and although he seems to despise the mere adorer of beauty, yet nothing else does he adore, and nothing else has he hitherto taught, but this, that one may worship no distinctly objective Deity, and be, nevertheless, a sincere, worthy, and high-minded man. But he has left the questions unanswered: Will such a faith produce results on the generality of men – will it stand? and, although it may so far satisfy the conscience as to produce in one man, or a few like unto him, the satisfaction of sincerity, can it produce the perseverance of action, the patience of hope, and the energy of faith, which have worked, and are working, in thousands and millions of Christian men – alike high and humble, rich and poor, ignorant and refined? Still, great should be the praise of a man who has redeemed literature from degradation, and changed it into a noble, if not a thoroughly religious thing, by the sheer force of genius, and rugged sincerity.

RACE HORSES AND HORSE RACES

It is Monday – the Monday before the Derby Day, and a railway takes us, in less than an hour, from London Bridge to the capital of the racing world, close to the abode of its Great Man, who is – need we add! the Clerk of the Epsom Course. It is, necessarily, one of the best houses in the place; being – honor to literature – a flourishing bookseller's shop. We are presented to the official. He kindly conducts us to the Downs, to show how the horses are temporarily stabled; to initiate us into some of the mysteries of the "field;" to reveal to us, in fact, the private life of the race-horse.

We arrive at a neat farm-house, with more outbuildings than are usually seen appended to so modest a homestead. A sturdy, well-dressed, well-mannered, purpose-like, sensible-looking man, presents himself. He has a Yorkshire accent. A few words pass between him and the Clerk of the Course, in which we hear the latter asseverate with much emphasis that we are, in a sporting sense, quite artless – we rather think "green," was the exact expression – that we never bet a shilling, and are quite incapable, if even willing, to take advantage of any information, or of any inspection vouchsafed to us. Mr. Filbert (the trainer) hesitates no longer. He moves his hat with honest politeness; bids us follow him, and lays his finger on the latch of a stable.

The trainer opens the door with one hand; and, with a gentleman-like wave of the other, would give us the precedence. We hesitate. We would rather not go in first. We acknowledge an enthusiastic admiration for the race-horse; but at the very mention of a race-horse, the stumpy animal whose portrait headed our earliest lesson of equine history, in the chapters of the "Universal Spelling Book," vanishes from our view, and the animal described in the Book of Job prances into our mind's eye: "The glory of his nostril is terrible. He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted. He swalloweth the ground with the fierceness of his rage." To enjoy, therefore, a fine racer – not as one does a work of art – we like the point of sight to be the point of distance. The safest point, in case of accident (say, for instance, a sudden striking-out of the hinder hoofs), we hold to be the vanishing point – a point by no means attainable on the inside of that contracted kind of stable known as a "loose-box."

The trainer evidently mistakes our fears for modesty. We boldly step forward to the outer edge of the threshold, but uncomfortably close to the hind-quarters of Pollybus, a "favorite" for the Derby. When we perceive that he has neither bit nor curb; nor bridle, nor halter, that he is being "rubbed down" by a small boy, after having taken his gallops; that there is nothing on earth – except the small boy – to prevent his kicking, or plunging, or biting, or butting his visitors to death; we breathe rather thickly. When the trainer exclaims, "Shut the door, Sam!" and the little groom does his master's bidding, and boxes us up, we desire to be breathing the fresh air of the Downs again.

"Bless you, sir!" says our good-tempered informant, when he sees us shrink away from Pollybus, changing sides at a signal from his cleaner; "these horses" (we look round, and for the first time perceive, with a tremor, the heels of another high-mettled racer protruding from an adjoining stall) "these horses are as quiet as you are; and – I say it without offense – just as well-behaved. It is quite laughable to hear the notions of people who are not used to them. They are the gentlest and most tractable creeturs in creation. Then, as to shape and symmetry, is there any thing like them?"

We acknowledge that Pretty Perth – the mare in the adjoining box – could hardly be surpassed for beauty.

"Ah, can you wonder at noblemen and gentlemen laying out their twenty and thirty thousand a year on them?"

"So much?"

"Why, my gov'nor's stud costs us five-and-twenty thousand a-year, one year with another. There's an eye, sir!"

The large, prominent, but mild optics of Pretty Perth are at this moment turned full upon us. Nothing, certainly, can be gentler than the expression that beams from them. She is "taking," as Mr. Filbert is pleased to say, "measure of us." She does not stare vulgarly, or peer upon us a half-bred indifference; but, having duly and deliberately satisfied her mind respecting our external appearance, allows her attention to be leisurely diverted to some oats with which the boy had just supplied the manger.

"It is all a mistake," continues Mr. Filbert, commenting on certain vulgar errors respecting race-horses; "thorough-breds are not nearly so rampagious as mongrels and half-breds. The two horses in this stall are gentlefolks, with as good blood in their veins as the best nobleman in the land. They would be just as back'ard in doing any thing unworthy of a lady or gentleman, as any lord or lady in St. James's – such as kicking, or rearing, or shying, or biting. The pedigree of every horse that starts in any great race, is to be traced as regularly up to James the First's Arabian, or to Cromwell's White Turk, or to the Darley or Godolphin barbs, as your great English families are to the Conqueror. The worst thing they will do, is running away now and then with their jockeys. And what's that? Why, only the animal's animal-spirit running away with him. They are not," adds Mr. Filbert, with a merry twinkle in his eye, "the only young bloods that are fond of going too fast."

To our question whether he considers that a race-horse could go too fast, Mr. Filbert gives a jolly negative, and remarks that it is all owing to high feeding and fine air; "for, mind you, horses get much better air to breathe than men do, and more of it."

All this while the two boys are sibillating lustily while rubbing and polishing the coats of their horses; which are as soft as velvet, and much smoother. When the little grooms come to the fetlock and pastern, the chamois-leather they have been using is discarded as too coarse and rough, and they rub away down to the hoofs with their sleek and their plump hands. Every wish they express, either in words or by signs, is cheerfully obeyed by the horse. The terms the quadruped seems to be on with the small biped, are those of the most easy and intimate friendship. They thoroughly understand one another. We feel a little ashamed of our mistrust of so much docility, and leave the stable with much less awe of a race-horse than we entered it.

"And now, Mr. Filbert, one delicate question – What security is there against these horses being drugged, so that they may lose a race?"

Mr. Filbert halts, places his legs apart, and his arms akimbo, and throws into his reply a severe significance, mildly tinged with indignation. He commences with saying, "I'll tell you where it is: there is a deal more said about foul play and horses going amiss, than there need be."

"Then the boys are never heavily bribed?"

"Heavily bribed, sir!" Mr. Filbert contracts his eyes, but sharpens up their expression, to look the suspicion down. "Bribed! it may not be hard to bribe a man, but it's not so easy to bribe a boy. What's the use of a hundred-pound note to a child of ten or twelve years old? Try him with a pen'north of apples, or a slice of pudding, and you have a better chance; though I would not give you the price of a sugar-stick for it. Nine out of ten of these lads would not have a hair of their horse's tails ruffled if they could help it; much more any such harm as drugs or downright poison. The boy and the horse are so fond of one another, that a racing stable is a regular happy family of boys and horses. When the foal is first born, it is turned loose into the paddock; and if his mother don't give him enough milk, the cow makes up the deficiency. He scampers about in this way for about a year: then he is 'taken up;' that is, bitted, and backed by a 'dumb-jockey' – a cross of wood made for the purpose. When he has got a little used to that, we try him with a speaking jockey – a child some seven or eight years old, who has been born, like the colt, in the stables. From that time till the horse retires from the turf, the two are inseparable. They eat, drink, sleep, go out and come in together. Under the directions of the trainer, the boy tells the horse what to do, and he does it; for he knows that he is indebted to the boy for every thing he gets. When he is hungry, it is the boy that gives him his corn; when he is thirsty, the boy hands him his water; if he gets a stone in his foot, the boy picks it out. By the time the colt is old enough to run, he and the boy have got to like one another so well that they fret to be away from one another. As for bribing! Why, you may as well try to bribe the horse to poison the boy, as the boy to let the horse be injured."

"But the thing has happened, Mr. Filbert?"

"Not so much as is talked about. Sometimes a likely foal is sent to a training stable, and cracked up as something wonderful. He is entered to run. On trial, he turns out to be next to nothing; and the backers, to save their reputation, put it about that the horse was played tricks with. There is hardly a great race, but you hear something about horses going amiss by foul play."

"Do many of these boys become jockeys?"

"Mostly. Some of them are jockeys already, and ride 'their own' horses as they call them. Here comes one."

A miniature man, with a horsewhip neatly twisted round the crop or handle, opens the gate.

"Well, Tommy, how are you, Tommy?"

"Well, sir, bobbish. Fine day, Mr. Filbert."

Although Mr. Filbert tells us in a whisper that Tommy is only twelve next birth-day, Tommy looks as if he had entered far into his teens. His dress is deceptive. Light trowsers terminating in buttons, laced shoes, long striped waistcoat, a cut-away coat, a colored cravat, a collar to which juveniles aspire under the name of "stick-ups," and a Paris silk hat, form his equipment.